


What Do Stars Do?

by Helena_Hathaway



Category: Stardust - All Media Types, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED HAPPY ENDING, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Stardust Fusion, Fantasy, Happy Ending, I have a degree in English & Creative Writing if that makes you want to click on this fic, Inspired by Stardust, Lots of minor character death but you won't feel anything i promise, M/M, Magic, Pirates, Stardust AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:40:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helena_Hathaway/pseuds/Helena_Hathaway
Summary: At the Midsummer festival, Yoongi spends a perfect night with a beautiful stranger from the other side of the wall. Little does he know that the wonderful, mysterious Hoseok can only step on Yoongi’s side of the wall once a year. With his best friend Seokjin by his side, Yoongi decides to jump the wall and traverse the magical kingdom of Stormhold to be reunited with his true love. But Yoongi never could have predicted just how many others also seek out Hoseok, and just what harm they intend to cause him.
Relationships: Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V/Park Jimin, Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga, Kim Namjoon | RM/Kim Seokjin | Jin
Comments: 55
Kudos: 27





	1. Soulmate

**Author's Note:**

> Please be advised: If you have read Stardust or seen the movie, the rules in this fic are drastically different. It's best to assume that nothing is the same here as in the book/movie until it's written in the text. Contrasty, if you aren't familiar with Stardust, you are good to go!

Every year on the 24th of June, near the edge of the wall, there is a small festival. A caravan or four will appear overnight, bringing familiar strangers. It’s the same set of faces almost every year, but they only stay for one night and then they’re gone. They set up tents and play their music right next to the wall, and everyone accepts that this is just a tradition, even though no one knows the exact origin. As far as anyone can tell, this has been a custom going on forever. The people who host this festival are very strange. They wear period appropriate clothes, as if they walked straight out of the eighteenth century, and they're outstanding at keeping in character. It’s as if they truly believe the year to be 1750. It’s a little laugh for one day a year, and their little town is locally famous for it.

When Yoongi was a little kid, he had no idea just how peculiar this festival was. He was simply excited to go to the Midsummer festival with Seokjin. They went every single year and were surrounded by the other kids in town who were all having the time of their lives. Kids talked to the actors with excitement and wonder and always tried to get them to break character, but it’s never worked. One time, a classmate of Yoongi’s snapped a picture of one of the strangers with a disposable camera and the actress just about screamed at the flash. It was like she had no idea what a camera was!

The adults of Wall celebrate the festival a little differently. The strangers bring the finest wines, spices, and produce imaginable. They have fruits no one’s ever even heard of before. Yoongi’s parents swear up and down that the best food in the world comes from this festival, so he always had to hide from them every year, because he didn’t want to be the one dork who came with his parents.

All the other kids in Wall – so named because of the big wall that runs along the edge and must never be crossed – loved nothing more than to make fun of Yoongi for a whole slew of different reasons, especially his parents. More accurately, they liked to make fun of the fact that they’re his _adoptive_ parents. Because his real parents apparently didn’t love him enough to keep him. Or at least, that’s what they all said.

Since Yoongi was a child, up until his 23rd year in Wall, he has shrugged those other kids off. Yoongi was on purpose, while half of those other kids were accidents. Now, those kids are no longer kids. They’re adults who still disregard Yoongi for one reason or another. They’re his coworkers, neighbors, and the people he shops beside at the supermarket. That’s about all they are, though.

The only person who never made fun of him is Yoongi’s lifelong best friend, Seokjin. He doesn’t have very many fond memories of Wall other than his parents and Seokjin. And the festival of course. Yoongi can’t say why it is that he’s never left Wall, nor why Seokjin hasn’t left Wall either. They both attended the community college one town over and when they should have left for the big city, they just… didn’t.

There’s something about Wall that makes it different from any place else. The wall itself is its own story. No one knows why the wall is there, when it was built, or why you’re not supposed to cross it. Like a lot of small towns, the residents have grown used to it. It’s there for a reason, but that reason is lost.

Yoongi doesn’t like remembering who he was as a kid. He had a good family, and one really great friend. But the rest of it is something he tries not to think about. Yoongi was always very… _different_ as a child. He always stood out for one reason or another. Kids used to say he was other worldly, like his head was stuck up in the stars. Maybe because he was bullied into it, or maybe because Yoongi is just very weird, he’s always felt a very strong connection with the stars above. He feels as though his true friends are all up there in the night sky, watching him every day. Sometimes they glow and blink, like they’re talking to him. Even to this day, Yoongi feels himself looking up at the sky out of instinct like he needs to tell all of his friends about the day he’s had. 

He doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. Does anybody? There is something missing inside of him. Some of the pieces are missing, and he doesn’t know what those pieces are. Maybe he needs to find the pieces outside of Wall, but when he thinks about leaving, something tells him no. He’s caught between wanting to leave more than anything and feeling like he shouldn’t.

He used to love the festival more than anything in the world. Deep down inside, he still does. But he was always too into it and that made kids mean. He tries to suffocate that wonder and longing he feels every Midsummer, because he doesn’t want to be that freak anymore.

“I _told_ you, the festival is so stupid. I’m so sick of going and pretending like there’s stuff to do,” Yoongi says, sitting on the couch of his shared apartment with Seokjin. He’s doen a good job at convincing himself that he doesn’t care. Other festivals in other towns celebrate with fried food, games, shows. No one else in the country seems to even celebrate Midsummer aside from Wall, and the entire festival is just people dressed up in period clothes and selling things you can find in an antique shop. It’s kind of pointless.

“We haven’t been since we became old enough to drink and I swear to God, Yoongi, my biggest dream on this celestial plane is to get hammered on fancy 19th century wine.”

“Okay, it’s not actually 19th century wine,” Yoongi rolls his eyes. “They just say it is so that they can charge you more for it.”

“What have the Min’s said all our lives?” Seokjin fakes a face of deep thought. “Oh, right! That the Midsummer festival has the best wine in the entire universe. Come on, Yoongi, I’m sick of drinking wine from a box.”

“It’s cheaper that way,” Yoongi shrugs. Besides, he’s less of a wine guy and more of a Soju guy. One of them can make him see stars in less than an hour whereas the other leaves him feeling like a pathetic middle aged cat lady.

“Please!” Seokjin says, giving him a pouty lip. He is pretty irresistible like that, but Yoongi has a whole season of his show to catch up on on Netflix. He never gets time to himself to watch anything because of how busy his job at the store is. The Midsummer festival shuts down basically the whole town and Yoongi really wants to take advantage of his day off.

“Why do you even need me? You could go by yourself?”

Seokjin glares at him. “Oh yeah, there’s nothing more fun than going to a renaissance fair all by yourself. Even better, getting drunk at a renaissance fair all by yourself. That really takes the cake.”

“You’re about four centuries too early,” Yoongi says. When he was a kid, he searched history books to try to figure out what century the festival actors were from. From a book he could barely even read about historical fashion, he was able to tell every kid in his class that he had learned what year they were from. That was around when he first met Seokjin actually. He was the only kid who thought it was cool how Yoongi had drawn pictures of the festival actors clothes so that he could figure it out. 

“Please, Yoongi! Please please please, pretty please with a million cherries on top?”

Yoongi groans. “Coupon to cover one of my shifts at work?”

Seokjin nods. “Sounds like a deal.”

Yoongi sighs and then stands up.

“What, are you going to wear that?” Seokjin asks when he gives Yoongi a once over. Yoongi gives him angry eyebrows. Yoongi was a very dedicated child. He begged his parents to buy him a period specific costume so that he might fit in at the festival. He wore that thing every year for Halloween until it was no longer big enough. Even then, he wore his too tight vest – complete with a fake pocket watch – until he ran the risk of hulking right out of it. It’s strange, even though Yoongi has tried to abandon the festival, he still feels so deeply bonded to it. He sometimes feels like he’s supposed to join them, like some sort of travelling carnie, but he’s never actually done it, because he doesn’t hate himself _that_ much.

“Seriously? Do you expect me to go out and buy a costume?” he asks. Yoongi doesn’t want to be teased about his childhood escapades by his best friend any more than by his former schoolboy enemies.

“Yoongi, you’re still wearing your pajama pants,” Seokjin says. Yoongi blanches and looks down. So he is. Seokjin might be onto something in suggesting he not wear his Scooby Doo pajama bottoms.

“Point,” Yoongi nods and then goes over to his room. He wonders whether it’ll be important that he looks attractive at the festival. He’s just going with Seokjin, and it’s not like he’s going to meet any cute single guys there. No one ever moves to Wall and no one ever moves out. The people Yoongi has known all his life are the ones he’ll know for the rest of it.

Yoongi pulls on any other pair of jeans. The holes in the knees are so big that he’s caught his mother trying to throw them in the trash on more than one occasion, but he’s always saved them from that fate. The weather is nice enough, but Yoongi hates the sun. The sun will only be out for another hour or two, but Yoongi’s always found it to be a little selfish. There are so many other stars out in the sky that are just as bright and beautiful, but they aren’t always hogging attention throughout the entire day. They never need to get so close just to shine. The sun is a bit full of itself.

Yoongi covers himself in a hoodie before he steps outside to see Seokjin waiting for him. Seokjin always looks beautiful, it’s something that gets on Yoongi’s nerves a little bit. In every way but the literal, Seokjin is his brother. He used to wish Seokjin was his actual brother when he was growing up just so that he wasn’t an only child and had someone to play with all day. This means that, as beautiful as he is, Yoongi is never going to want to date him. It would be morally wrong to date him, even if they are eerily similar to each other and would make romantic sense. Certainly, the kids at school thought he and Seokjin were dating because it was yet another reason for why Yoongi got made fun of.

Yoongi isn’t unlucky in love, he just doesn’t have any interest. He wants to be in love desperately, but he’s never come across any person who cuts it. He’s probably just waiting for the one and only. There’s no use in experimenting with other men until he meets whoever he’s meant for.

Their apartment is above a print shop, but it’s closed today just like everything else. Yoongi looks through the window as they pass, wishing that he could avoid going to the festival by entering one of the shops on the street. They live on Wall street – no pun intended – the cutest street in all of Wall, and it’s only a fifteen minute walk from their apartment to the wall itself. Yoongi’s never been on the other side of the wall, and he’s hardly ever considered it. Their little town is either very superstitious or very silly, because there’s a guard who stands watch at the wall all day, preventing people from jumping over the small gap in the cobblestone. You can jump it anywhere else, but not that little gap. It’s probably some sort of publicity stunt, but it’s not like there’s anything exciting over the wall. It’s just a grassy field and then a large cover of trees. You don’t need to cross to the other side to see that much.

Part of Yoongi is curious as to why the wall is even there, and why their little town is so obsessed with it that they’re named after it. There are no other places you go where a whole town is named after an insignificant little thing. Yoongi has never heard of a town being named Tree or Pond. It does seem rather appropriate to hold the Midsummer festival right in front of the “mysterious” wall, though.

Yoongi drags his feet as he follows behind Seokjin. Everyone else is already at the festival. The whole town is eerily quiet, but there’s noise up above them. Yoongi hears a soft humming coming from the festival and wonders what type of instrument it is. It sounds like the sweet humming of a voice, but these actors don’t use microphones and it’s far too loud to be an actual person. Yoongi shrugs it off. The ways of this festival will always be a little bit cryptic.

The humming gets louder as they approach, and it now sounds more like singing. It’s a beautiful sound, and Yoongi finds himself smiling. It’s been years since they were last here, but nothing at all has changed. The caravans and tents are in different spots, the spice seller is now the first tent you see rather than the handmade jewelry. It’s nice to know that Yoongi can pick up where he left off as he enters the grounds.

“We could always use some of these fancy spices they have,” Seokjin says with a shrug. They always say they’re going to buy nice things for the apartment, but rarely do. They’re both pretty decent cooks, though, so Yoongi nods. He watches Seokjin buy some spices, and he’s a little astonished when he sees saffron for so cheap. That will be nice to cook with, since they’ve never had enough money to be that fancy.

Yoongi drifts off and admires a few items. There are handmade baskets and hats. Yoongi sees bread, cheese, fruits. Seokjin stops at another stand to buy a candle and the merchant tells him it’s a very special candle which he needs to be very careful when he uses. Yoongi rolls his eyes at the tactics they use, but he doesn’t stop Seokjin from spending his money however he sees fit. They don’t have any credit card readers obviously, so Seokjin pays in coins.

Yoongi still hears the soft singing and he’s growing to like it, whatever it is. Maybe he’s just high on the mystique of the whole festival. He’s always felt weird here. It feels like he’s finally home, but his body always tries to reject it. At once he feels like he belongs and like he has to escape.

He hasn’t been here since he started college. Even though he still lived in Wall during college, he always found an excuse not to go. Yoongi would specifically take classes over the summer so that he would have a reason for why he had to miss it. He can’t explain why it’s been so important to him that he avoids the festival every year, he just has to. He’s far too easily lured in by the mystery and show of it all. It seems to whisper to him, and Yoongi is afraid of being caught like a fish on a hook.

They don’t seem to sell bottles of wine, only individual glasses. No paper cups, just fine glasses that there doesn’t seem to be a place for you to deposit once you’re done. Yoongi stands beside Seokjin in line to get his wine and looks around the crowds.

_You’re here at last!_

Yoongi jumps at the voice, turning around to identify its source. The voice sounds like it came right at the back of his neck, but when Yoongi looks around, there’s no one there. No one else is even in line to get wine behind him. The closest person to him is Seokjin, but he’s stood in front of Yoongi, scrolling on his phone while he waits.

“Trippy,” Yoongi says to himself. He hasn’t even had wine yet!

A few moments pass and Yoongi considers pulling out his phone. The cell reception isn’t great in Wall, Seokjin says it’s because they’re on ley line, but that’s total bullshit.

_Come find me, my love._

“What?” Yoongi asks, even more surprised by the voice this time. He was about ready to brush the voice off as his imagination, but now he’s hearing it again and still no one’s behind him.

“What?” Seokjin asks.

“Did you hear that?” Yoongi asks.

“Hear you say ‘what’?”

“No, no. The voice.”

“There’s a lot of people here, Yoongi. I hear a lot of voices.”

Yoongi shakes his head, trying to push away the weird feeling that voice stirred in him. It was the most beautiful voice he’s ever heard by an impossible margin. The voice was like butter, silky and perfect. It’s just weird that it seems to have come from nowhere. It’s not Seokjin’s voice, but there’s no one else close enough that it could be. It’s a bit like that humming or singing he heard earlier. Yoongi thinks it might even be the same voice.

_I am waiting for you, my love._

“Okay, what the fuck?” Yoongi says, sounding angry now. “Not cool, Jin. Whatever you’re doing, please stop.”

“Stop what?” he asks, looking very confused and a little annoyed.

“You’re doing something, and I don’t like it. Is it some sort of speaker or something?” Yoongi asks.

“Yoongi, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“There’s a voice!” Yoongi says. “Saying weird things to me, but there’s no one there.”

“What kinds of weird things?” Seokjin asks, raising an eyebrow with a dirty expression, and Yoongi punches him in the arm.

“Whatever. Just stop doing it.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Seokjin shakes his head and stares at Yoongi for a little while. Yoongi glares back, waiting for Seokjin to confess to the prank or to somehow trigger the voice again, but nothing happens. They stare at each other for several moments until the person selling wine calls Seokjin over because it’s his turn in line. Yoongi stands still for just a few moments while Seokjin rushes to get his drink. He turns to ask Yoongi if he wants anything and he shakes his head. He’s not in the mood for wine. With the weird feeling prickling all over him, he thinks it’s best that he stays sober.

_Please, I have waited so long for you._

Yoongi swats at the back of his neck and feels a warm spike run through him. He’s never felt a feeling this strange before. He knows it must just be a practical joke of some sort, and yet, Yoongi has never desired anything more in his life than to find the source of the voice. Maybe just because it’s so warm and inviting. Either way, he marches over to Seokjin.

“Did you hear it that time?” Yoongi asks him.

Seokjin is holding his wine happily, but his expression changes in a moment. This time his eyebrow raises in concern.

“Are you hearing voices, Yoongi?”

Yoongi’s eyes open in panic. Of course not! Of course he’s not hearing voices! He’s never heard voices before, but he knows that’s a sign that he’s lost his mind, and he has a firm grip on his sanity, for the most part. After the childhood he had, the idea that someone might think he’s lost it is a very real fear he still has.

“No!” he says.

“Then what are you going on about?”

“I don’t know,” Yoongi huffs and crosses his arms. Something in his gut is forcing his eyes to look behind him, as if something really is calling to him. There’s nothing there except for venders in their period clothing and Wall residents in their shorts and T-Shirts. Yoongi is the only one here who isn’t dressed for the middle of summer.

“Come sit with me then,” Seokjin says, and gestures for Yoongi to follow him to a little patch of grass that hasn’t been traipsed over. The festival never brings basic things like picnic benches or modern trash bags. It’s a little unreasonable just how historically accurate they try to keep everything. Still, it’s always perfectly clean the day after so at least they clean up after themselves.

Yoongi sits next to Seokjin as he takes his first sip of the wine. Instantly, his face lights up with amazement. “Holy shit.” Seokjin looks at his glass like he’s not sure if it’s even real. He takes another sip, a sip that’s just a bit too long. Yoongi silently judges him as Seokjin drains the glass almost immediately.

“Dude, take it easy,” Yoongi says when Seokjin pulls the empty glass away and wipes off some wine from his upper lip.

“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted in my entire life,” he says, and Yoongi can tell from the look in his eyes that he means it wholeheartedly. “I have to go get another. Are you sure you don’t want any?”

Yoongi sighs to himself and shrugs. If Seokjin is that crazy for it, what can it hurt? “I suppose I’ll have a glass.”

Seokjin hops back onto his feet. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Yoongi waves him off and looks down at his feet out in front of him. He chews on his inner lip for a moment before he hears it again.

_Won’t you come find me?_

Yoongi slaps his ear like that’s going to do anything. That voice is just so beckoning. It’s the most gorgeous thing he’s ever heard. Yoongi feels as though the voice is caramel and chocolate. It’s like a warm bath after a long year. Yoongi almost stands up to follow the voice, but then he remembers how stupid it all is. It’s this goddamn festival. It always messes with him. This is why he didn’t want to come here.

Seokjin sits back down next to him and Yoongi isn’t sure how much time has passed. It feels like he’s been waiting for an hour with his own thoughts, just thinking about the pretty voice. He turns to him and gives Seokjin a face to see he’s only got one glass of wine in his hand.

“Sorry, they only let you buy one at a time for some reason.”

“Can I at least have a sip?” Yoongi asks. Now he’s brimming with curiosity. Seokjin’s clearly feeling evil today because he shakes his head and takes a sip.

“Nuh-uh, this one is mine. Go and get your own. I’ll wait right here for you.”

Yoongi groans. Seokjin is probably just doing this so that he doesn’t have to pay for Yoongi. He supposes this is his own fault for not venmoing Seokjin for the takeout last week. Yoongi dusts off his pants, but they’re perfectly clean. He walks over to the wine merchant, intent on purchasing his own glass when the voice comes back again, and Yoongi realizes for the first time that the voice really is inside of his head.

_Follow my voice, love. I’m waiting for you._

Yoongi freezes. He’s helpless to ignore it anymore. Maybe he just needs to know where it’s coming from and then he’ll leave. That’s probably all that it is. He just needs to scratch his curiosity. Yoongi walks in the general direction that had called to him earlier, but he’s not really sure where he’s going. The festival isn’t large, but there are a few twists and turns that make it a bit of a maze.

 _Closer_.

Yoongi’s heart feels too heavy in his chest. This voice is dripping into him in all of the best ways. He wants to know who it belongs to more than he cares about his own life. This is the same voice that leads ships to ruin on jagged rocks, but Yoongi doesn’t care. He needs to know who this voice belongs to.

Yoongi pulls out his phone to text Seokjin, but then he finds the phone in his hand and forgets what it’s for. He looks curiously at it and then shakes his head. He puts the phone back into his pocket and keeps walking. It seems as though the aisles between carts and caravans is completely packed to the brim with people. Yoongi has to push past people he knows and people he doesn’t. Somehow, Yoongi can tell exactly where he needs to go.

_Almost here. I cannot wait to meet you._

Yoongi’s pace quickens just a little bit. He finds himself in a less crowded area of the grounds and comes to a stop in front of a brilliant yellow caravan. Yoongi tilts his head when he looks at it. He’s not sure how he knows it, but this is where he’s meant to be. Yoongi studies the caravan for a long while. It’s quite large, with a roof and walls that would fit a bed quite comfortably. It seems to be historically accurate, but Yoongi has trouble believing anyone was traipsing around back then in a bright yellow wagon.

_There you are._

Everything that Yoongi has ever learned and believed could never prepare him for the person who steps around the caravan a moment later. Yoongi’s mouth dries up as he sees the man. The man is perfect. He’s more than perfect. He is the reason for why life exists. His face is… and his eyes… and his nose… and of course his lips… Yoongi’s completely frozen. The man is a few strides away from him and Yoongi is just staring at him. He can’t pull his gaze away. He can’t remember anything right now. All he knows is the beauty of this man and the way his heart is pounding.

“Hello,” the man says, and that’s… that’s the voice! As soon as he hears the voice, Yoongi feels his limbs come back to him. That’s the voices from his head. It’s far more beautiful now, like a bird’s song. It’s so full of honey and the voice draws Yoongi’s feet to walk ever closer.

“What is your name?” he asks delicately when Yoongi stops a foot away from him. Yoongi can tell his mouth is open in awe, and even if he knew how to be embarrassed by it, he wouldn’t be able to stop it. This man is perfect. This man is everything. Yoongi doesn’t know him, but he would lay down his life for him without a moment’s hesitation.

“My name is Hoseok,” the man says when Yoongi doesn’t say anything.

“Hoseok,” Yoongi repeats. That is the most perfect name in all of existence. Those are the only letters that have ever mattered. All together they make a name so beautiful that it feels dangerous to say it, and yet Yoongi wants nothing more than to chant it in his mind.

“Yes. And what is yours?” Hoseok smiles at him and Yoongi can feel himself positively glowing. Like actually. He thinks that if he were to look at himself, he might actually be gleaming under the moon. When did it become nighttime anyway?

“I’m Yoongi,” he says.

“Yoongi,” Hoseok says his name, and Yoongi feels a little faint at the way his name sounds on Hoseok’s lips. Yoongi is officially going to forbid anyone to ever say his name ever again if they’re not Hoseok. No one else’s voice matters in the slightest bit.

“Have you come for the flowers?” Hoseok asks, and gestures to a small table beside him. Yoongi looks at the table absently to see the flowers. There are only four types of them and he can hardly seem to understand Hoseok’s question. When he looks back at him, Yoongi can tell from the glimmer in Hoseok’s eye that he’s playing a game right now by not addressing whatever is happening. Yoongi doesn’t know the rules to this game.

“Flowers?” Yoongi asks.

“Yes,” Hoseok nods.

“I- I don’t… I haven’t come for the flowers…”

_Wait until she leaves._

Yoongi’s surprise is evident on his face. Hoseok’s mouth didn’t move just now, but it was very clearly his voice. That’s a neat trick. Yoongi looks around, searching for an answer when he sees a very old, ugly woman scowling as she comes out of the cart. She barely even sees Yoongi as she finds balance on her decrepit feet.

“Mistress,” Hoseok bows his head politely to her. Yoongi stares at Hoseok, not knowing how or for what purpose he should look at the ugly woman. Yoongi doesn’t want to look at anyone else ever again besides him.

“Keep watch of the cart while I’m away.”

“Yes, of course, mistress.”

Yoongi feels as though he’s about to cry. He doesn’t know what’s going on. His head is empty except for Hoseok. All Yoongi has ever known or cared about is him.

The ugly woman gives Hoseok a glare, waiting for him to give their customer a sales pitch. Hoseok seems to be completely filled with grace. He wouldn’t know how to be awkward or embarrassed ever. He looks back at Yoongi and smiles fondly.

“H-how much is this one?” Yoongi points at one of the flowers and Hoseok smiles courteously at Yoongi.

_You won’t want that one._

The ugly woman seems to accept this exchange as normal and begins walking away. For such an old woman, she is swift on her feet. Hoseok watches her leave and Yoongi turns his head to watch as well.

“Thank you, my love,” Hoseok says as soon as she’s out of ear shot.

“Th-thank you? For what?” Yoongi asks.

“For playing along. I would have gotten into so much trouble if she knew.” Hoseok reaches his hand out to touch the side of his arm. The first time Hoseok touches him is electric. Something inside of Yoongi twinkles like it’s been awakened.

It’s at Hoseok’s touch that the world comes back to him, as if by magic. Yoongi remembers the festival, remembers Seokjin left behind somewhere. He remembers Hoseok’s voice in his head and everything, somehow, grows to be real again. The lure of Hoseok is still in him, maybe even stronger now. Yoongi just feels the clouds in his mind begin to melt away.

“Who are you?” Yoongi asks. “Or _what_ are you?”

Hoseok smiles at him. “I am yours, Yoongi.”

“Wh-what?”

“Your world does not have the same magic as mine,” Hoseok shakes his head. “I don’t know how to describe it in your words.”

“What do you mean ‘my world’?”

“My Yoongi,” Hoseok says, and puts a soft hand on the side of Yoongi’s face. Yoongi feels his knees growing weak from the way he feels about this man. This man who he knows nothing in the world about except for his name and his strange power.

“May I kiss you?” Hoseok asks. If this weren’t Hoseok, Yoongi would push him off and run away. He’s known him for all of three minutes, but it feels as though Hoseok should have asked him that question years ago. “I can show you the truth if I kiss you.”

Yoongi just nods. He doesn’t know what Hoseok means, but he knows that he’s waited his entire life to kiss Hoseok.

Hoseok puts both of his hands on either side of Yoongi’s face and his touch is so soft that Yoongi almost can’t even feel it. He closes his eyes and then waits for the blissful moment when Hoseok presses his lips to Yoongi’s. The kiss, beyond being the most perfect minute of Yoongi’s life, is also rather informative. Yoongi doesn’t see a vision. He doesn’t hear a voice or anything like that. He just becomes aware _instantly_ of knowledge that he’s never had before.

What he learns in the span of a few seconds doesn’t seem entirely real, but nothing has ever felt more real. The first thing he knows without a doubt is that Hoseok is his soulmate. That’s the clearest thing in the universe. It’s written write into Yoongi’s bones. He and Hoseok were born to find each other. Now that they have, their lives are complete. Except Yoongi learns a few more things in the same instant. Hoseok isn’t free. Hoseok is trapped with a small silver thread around his ankle. Yoongi doesn’t understand what that means, but he knows that Hoseok has been bonded for years.

Yoongi also learns that Hoseok called to him because he sensed Yoongi was nearby. It’s Hoseok’s first time crossing the wall. The other side of the wall is… Stormhold. Hoseok hasn’t been able to use his magic since he was trapped, but somehow being on this side of the wall has brought some of his magic back.

Yoongi feels all of this knowledge wash over him and he pulls away with a gasp. He doesn’t understand half of what he just learned. He doesn’t know how it came to his head, other than knowing Hoseok put it there. Yoongi looks around himself. Everything looks so different than it had before. Did all of that really just happen? Can it all be true? Hoseok is magical? Hoseok is his _soulmate_?

“There,” Hoseok says, happily. He keeps his hands on Yoongi’s face, not like Yoongi is going to ever go anywhere again.

It can’t be drugs, Yoongi knows it can’t be drugs. You have to drink or eat something to be drugged and Yoongi hasn’t yet. It would be offensive to even suggest that it’s not real. Of course it’s real. Yoongi isn’t going to dismiss the way he feels just because it’s “impossible”. The fact that it’s real makes it possible.

“Hoseok! You’re my… you and I, we’re-”

“I know,” Hoseok smiles. “You are every bit as beautiful as I always dreamed you to be.”

“This is real. This is happening. Right?”

“It is real,” Hoseok nods. “And I am so happy that it is.”

“But how do I know all this? How did you know? How did you show me?”

“We are connected,” Hoseok says, simply. “We’ve always been connected to each other, Yoongi. I was only able to communicate with you because you are mine. You’re my one and only love.”

“I know that,” Yoongi says, “I know. But how do I know? How is this…? This doesn’t make any sense.” He wants to put his hands everywhere on Hoseok just to make sure he’s real. The feelings that are running through him shouldn’t make sense. This is a perfect stranger and yet everything is right. It’s magic. It can’t be anything else. Yoongi knows Hoseok like he knows all of the stars.

Yoongi didn’t know he was waiting for him. All of his life he’s been waiting for this man. Hoseok is the only person he will ever love this way, without question. How does Yoongi already love him? It’s just so easy. Loving this man is the simplest thing he’s ever felt.

“Magic, Yoongi,” Hoseok says. “Love is the purest but also the most basic type of magic. Even people on your side of the wall know about this magic.”

“I didn’t know I believed in magic,” Yoongi says, shaking his head. He doesn’t know what inclines him to kiss Hoseok again. All he knows is that he must. Yoongi doesn’t learn anything new from this kiss. All he feels is the press of perfect lips. There is no one on earth he could ever love this way. It’s funny to think that other people could care about someone the way Yoongi cares about him.

“Are you… Hoseok, you’re not an alien, are you?” Yoongi asks, and Hoseok laughs, putting a hand over his face when he laughs. He could ask Yoongi the same question!

“I am not,” he shakes his head. “I’m simply from the other side of the wall.”

“That’s not space or anything?”

“No,” Hoseok giggles.

“Okay, cool. That’s good. You talk kind of funny though. Kind of old timey.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s okay, I kind of like it. It’s weird. Like me,” Yoongi says, before kissing him some more.

What’s on the other side of the wall? Do they have all the things Yoongi believed in as a child? Are there unicorns and mermaids? Maybe Yoongi wasn’t the weird kid. If Hoseok is connected to him, maybe all of those surreal things he dreamed of were things Hoseok knew. Yoongi might have been right this entire time.

It doesn’t really matter now that Yoongi has him. All of the things that happened in the past are gone now. He has Hoseok now. In an instant, he was granted the world. Yoongi’s life has changed completely. What is he going to do with his life now? He’s going to bring Hoseok home to meet his parents. Seokjin is going to have a hoot with Hoseok. They won’t understand each other at all. Yoongi barely understands him, but that’s something he’ll work out in the days, weeks, years of being with Hoseok.

“I am so sorry, Yoongi,” Hoseok shakes his head and pulls away.

“Sorry? Don’t be sorry. Hoseok, you’re wonderful. Why would you be sorry?”

“We don’t have the time you dream of. We only have a few hours left.”

“A few hours? What?” Yoongi’s entire heart might as well stop in his chest. Those are words he’s more petrified to hear than anything else in the world.

Hoseok’s smile is so sweet and yet so sad. Yoongi doesn’t know if that smile had been sad earlier, but it certainly is now. “As soon as Midsummer is over, I must go back.”

“N-no. You can’t. Not now that we’ve met each other!”

“Sweet Yoongi,” Hoseok says lovingly. Yoongi doesn’t know anything about him. He knows nothing about this man, and yet he knows that being separated from him is the scariest prospect he’ll ever face. “I cannot stay here.” He gestures down and that’s when Yoongi remembers the thread around his ankle. Yoongi instinctively ducks down and grabs his keys from his pocket. He keeps a small knife on his keychain and immediately cuts the silver thread. It cuts easily, but in mere seconds, it mends itself. He tries cutting the thread again and it repairs itself like liquid reforming. If there was any hope in Yoongi denying the existence of magic, there isn’t anymore. He closes his eyes and tries not to feel so dejected. He doesn’t understand the weight of this, but he knows it’s serious.

Hoseok pulls Yoongi back up to face him, seeing the look of sadness in Yoongi’s eyes. “Only my mistress can free me. Either by releasing me or in her death.”

“That’s not fair,” Yoongi starts shaking his head. He thinks he’s going to cry. He’s not sure if he already is. “It’s not fair. I only just met you.”

“I know,” Hoseok says. “But at least I got to meet you. At least I got to see you and I know that you’re safe.”

“You say that like I’ll never see you again, Hoseok.”

Hoseok looks down sadly, and Yoongi realizes that Hoseok has been trying to tell him that. Yoongi shakes his head, refusing to accept it. He doesn’t know Hoseok’s world or magic. He doesn’t know how Hoseok knew who he was and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about this festival or about the ugly woman who’s keeps him tethered like this. Yoongi doesn’t care about anything besides the emotions he already has for this man he’s never met.

“We’ll meet again. We’ll meet again, I know it.” Hoseok smiles at him, and Yoongi can tell that he doesn’t believe it. Yoongi puts his hands on the sides of Hoseok’s head and presses his forehead against him. “We will. We’ll meet again.”

“If you wish it, I will do everything to make it so,” Hoseok says. “My magic has been diminished greatly since being bonded. But I will use as much of it as I can for you. Now that I’ve found you, it feels unfair that we are parted.”

“Yes,” Yoongi says. He doesn’t know what he’s saying yes to or why he’s behaving this way. Yoongi is more logical than this. Certainly, he’s not the most normal person about town, but he’s not generally as free thinking as this. Yoongi was never a skeptic as a kid. He believed in all sorts of things. He would talk about wizards, mermaids, unicorns. It was all real to him. But he grew up and learned better. Believing in those types of things only made his school life worse. So, as he’s grown up, he’s rebuilt himself so many times in order to be as normal as he can possibly be. Until just now, he started to believe himself to be.

He knows that none of this should be real. If it weren’t so tangible, Yoongi wouldn’t believe it. But if there is something that is completely clear, it’s that there is no scientific explanation for Hoseok. What Hoseok has done, what Hoseok has shown him, how Yoongi feels for him, that’s not of Yoongi’s world. There’s no trying to deny it, because ignoring what’s directly in front of him would make him the true fool.

Hoseok must be a siren. They might have those where he’s from, because he’s from a world where magic is real. If they have sirens there, Hoseok is one of them. Except, Yoongi knows that Hoseok would never hurt him for anything. Hoseok was made for him and vice versa.

Yoongi doesn’t feel any of his normal inhibitions. He’s lost all of his senses. He’s still in Wall, but only physically. Mentally, he and Hoseok are the only two people in the universe.

“Here,” Hoseok says picking up one of the flowers on the table. Yoongi had forgotten that they were there. “This is for you.”

Yoongi looks at it. It’s a white flower, very delicate looking. Yoongi is worried he’ll break it, but Hoseok fastens the flower to his hoodie. Yoongi feels weird for the first time since meeting him. He’s standing here in his ripped jeans and a hoodie while Hoseok is dressed like he came right out of a period drama. His clothes indicate his wealth, or lack thereof. Then again, if Hoseok has been trapped or kidnapped, it would make sense for him to be dressed like this.

“Thank you,” Yoongi says, looking at his new flower.

“This is a snowdrop. It will keep you safe. Always wear this for me, alright?” Hoseok says. He’s unfamiliar with Yoongi’s style of clothes, but he pulls on the chord to his hoodie with interest. “It will never die so long as you remember me.”

Yoongi doesn’t know what else to do besides grab Hoseok by the back of the neck and kiss him desperately. He doesn’t know when he’ll get to see him again. He knows that he will. He refuses to let this be the only time. If Hoseok truly is his soulmate, and every single cell in his brain is saying that he is, then Yoongi cannot live a life without seeing him again. He’ll do anything for this man. Genuinely, he would do anything for him.

“Yoongi!” Seokjin’s voice comes out of nowhere. Yoongi turns, nervous that Seokjin is about to find him and pull him away. The brief daydream he had of showing Hoseok off to him seems centuries ago. That was a dream he had when he thought that he had Hoseok for life. How can that have been a thought that ran through him mere minutes ago? Seokjin will never believe what’s just happened. He’ll never believe that Hoseok is his soulmate. He’ll think Yoongi’s insane. He’ll drag Yoongi away and Hoseok won’t be able to chase because he’s tied here. Even though all Yoongi sees is a small silver thread, it’s quite clear that there’s no escaping it.

“That’s my roommate. If he finds us-”

Hoseok takes Yoongi’s hand and pulls him to the caravan. He steps up and then pulls Yoongi in after him. It takes only a few moments for the doors to be closed, leaving Yoongi in the small, enclosed space with Hoseok. It should be dark but there’s a faint glow about the room. Hoseok finds a box of matches and lights one. Instead of lighting a candle, he seems to light a small spot in the air. Hoseok blows out the match and leaves in the air a small flickering flame.

“Whoa,” Yoongi says. Hoseok might not have needed a flame when Yoongi shines all by himself.

“Tell me all about you while we still have time, my love,” Hoseok says. “Midnight is growing near; I must know everything before we part.”

“You have to tell me too, Hoseok,” Yoongi says. He can’t say that name enough. He wants it imprinted on his tongue.

“Yes, yes,” Hoseok nods. “You first. I know little of your world. You have your own type of magic here.”

“N-no,” Yoongi shakes his head. He supposes that Hoseok’s world probably doesn’t have phones or electricity, but that gives Yoongi an idea. “Wait a minute, can I do something real quick?”

“Of course,” Hoseok nods. Yoongi pulls out his phone and goes to the camera app. He must be an idiot for not thinking of this sooner.

“What in the worlds?” Hoseok asks, looking confused. He puts his hand to the back of Yoongi’s phone with wonder. It’s metal, warm to the touch, and so small. Thicker than paper but only hardly, and it glows all on its own. Hoseok doesn’t know what to make of it.

Yoongi could cry from how cute he finds Hoseok. He didn’t know this is what his soulmate would look like. Yoongi has never pictured himself being with someone so beautiful. They don’t make people this beautiful on his side of the wall. It must be more of that magic.

It’s a bit like time travelling, isn’t it? Hoseok has never seen a phone before, because he comes from a completely different time and world. Yoongi wonders if Hoseok’s world is simply running behind schedule or truly stuck in a different time. They probably don’t need phones where Hoseok is from since they can light flames in the air and talk to each other through their minds.

“So, I’m going to take a picture of you,” Yoongi says. “To remember you by.”

“Sorry… I don’t know what you mean.” Yoongi knows photography was invented in the 1700s so Hoseok’s world isn’t just stuck in the past, it’s a completely different timeline. He wonders when they’ll get to WiFi. 

“If I kiss you, can I show you things like you did?” Yoongi asks.

“No,” Hoseok smiles. “But you may kiss me anyway.”

Yoongi smiles and kisses him again. Hoseok’s lips are perfect. Yoongi kissed a few guys in college, but that was the extent of it. That could never compare to this though. When Yoongi kisses him, he sees stars. He feels himself glowing from the way it feels. He feels loved and warm and like he’ll never be sad again. Hoseok’s kisses are soft and sweet, like he’s never done it before. Yoongi is perfectly content to kiss him forever. It’s possible that he does kiss Hoseok forever.

“I’ve just gotta,” Yoongi starts and then drifts off. “I’ve just gotta take a picture. It will only take a second.” Yoongi parts from him for a moment to take the photo. His camera flashes automatically because the room is so dark and Hoseok is surprised by it. He blinks violently, reacting in the same way that Yoongi witnessed so many years ago when that actress – or maybe not actress – had her photo taken. Yoongi giggles as he looks at the picture he just took. Hoseok looks surprised and shocked in the picture and Yoongi can feel his heart bubble with adoration. Of course this is his soulmate. How could he be anything else?

“What kind of magic do you have, Yoongi?” Hoseok asks, looking at the screen. He’s totally in awe that Yoongi was able to capture an image of him like that. In only seconds with no paint or canvas. Just a tiny little object.

“It’s not magic,” Yoongi says. “Everyone has one.”

Hoseok doesn’t seem to care. He brings Yoongi back to his lips and kisses him devilishly. Yoongi forgets the world – or worlds – outside. All he knows is Hoseok’s mouth against his. He knows his skin, and his breath. Yoongi falls against him like it’s natural. It’s something he’s known all his life. He knows every angle and curve of Hoseok. He knows where to touch, and Hoseok knows just as well. Neither of them are experts; they both know everything. An impossible world becomes so possible to believe when they’re with each other.

Yoongi can’t say how it is that he comes to be lying beside Hoseok thirty minutes later. Out of breath and feeling higher than he’s ever been. Yoongi’s never done anything like this before. Well, obviously he hasn’t, because no one has ever dealt with meeting their soulmate like this. Do people in Yoongi’s world even have soulmates? Maybe not everyone has a soulmate, and he and Hoseok are just lucky.

Even in college when he had a few unserious relationships, he never laid down with anyone. Yoongi knows with absolute certainty that he will never be with anyone else besides Hoseok. Not ever. Yoongi will see him again, but in the unlikely reality that he doesn’t, Yoongi would never want to be with any other man after tonight. Even if Hoseok hadn’t told him, Yoongi would know this is his soulmate. Yoongi would never be able to move on.

_I love you, Yoongi._

“Can you hear my thoughts when you do that?” Yoongi asks him. He feels a little exposed, so he grabs the hoodie he was wearing and does his best to cover up a little bit, but Hoseok pushes it aside and clambers on top of him to kiss him some more.

“I can only hear words and sentences you repeat over and over in your head.”

“Can you hear this?” Yoongi asks. He repeats the same words in his head a dozen times. “ _I love you too. I love you too. I love you too.”_

Hoseok kisses his nose. “Yes, I can hear that.”

“Good.”

“Mm, I never want this night to end,” Hoseok says, laying his head on top of Yoongi’s chest.

“We’ll see each other again, Hoseok,” Yoongi assures him.

“I hope so.”

They both breathe and share silence with each other as Hoseok pets his soft hair. Yoongi’s skin gleams in the flickering light of the small flame.

“You are shining, sweet Yoongi.”

Assuming that Hoseok is referring to how pale he is, he blushes. “I don’t get a lot of sunlight. I’m an indoor cat.”

Hoseok laughs loudly and Yoongi likes the way it sounds from him. It’s more than safe for him to say that Hoseok has the most beautiful laugh in the world. It’s quite noticeable.

Yoongi kisses Hoseok’s neck and runs his hand over a small red birthmark on his shoulder. It’s cute, shaped like a little star. Yoongi tries to memorize everything there is to see about Hoseok and his body. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the color of his eyes, a deep brown, similar to Yoongi’s own, but his are far more piercing. He won’t forget Hoseok’s hair, which is brown, nearly black. Yoongi’s own hair is either brown or red depending on the lighting. He used to do fancier colors like blue and green, but now that he’s an adult he’s had to settle for something that’s just slightly to the left of natural. He has a weird urge to show Hoseok what he looks like in colors that people in Stormhold have never seen.

“You are so beautiful, my love,” Hoseok says fondly. He strokes his hand along Yoongi’s cheek, making him feel special and wanted.

“I like when you call me that,” he says. “No one says stuff like that here.”

The two of them kiss for a little while longer. Yoongi forgets the world outside of this little room inside the caravan. Seokjin is out there looking for him somewhere. He might be worried about him, but Yoongi can’t bring himself to care. Yoongi’s parents might even be here. They wouldn’t know what to do with what’s been happening to him this last hour. Wow, it really has only been an hour. Yoongi has said I love you and everything.

“What happens if that woman comes back?” Yoongi asks. He’s not terribly afraid of her and he can’t explain why. If she trapped Hoseok, couldn’t she do the same to him? That wouldn’t be so bad though, because then Yoongi would get to remain with Hoseok, right?

“She cannot use her magic when you have this snowdrop.” Hoseok takes the flower from his discarded clothes and tucks it behind Yoongi’s ear. He smiles up at Hoseok and feels so safe. “Most people are unable to use their magic on your side of the wall.”

“Oh?” He stews on questions to ask him but there’s so many. He wants to know more and more about the other side of the wall. How come no one else knows what goes on over there? If there’s a whole different world on the other side of the wall, someone would have sounded the alarms by now. There would have been a military invasion and everything would have been destroyed.

“Most of your people cannot enter my world,” Hoseok says, apparently having read his mind. “Just as we can only cross the border one time a year, many of your people would be unable to enter Stormhold. They might cross the wall and see nothing, or the magic of my land will convince them to turn back.”

“Would I be able to? If I crossed the wall, would I see your world?” Yoongi asks him.

Hoseok hums softly before he laughs. “Yes, I believe you could.”

“Then I can come find you! If you have to leave once Midsummer is over, I’ll simply jump the wall to come find you.”

“My world is very dangerous Yoongi. For you more than anyone else. I want you to stay here where you’ll be safe.”

“But Hoseok, you’re everything.”

“And you are my light, Yoongi. However, Stormhold is far too dangerous a place for an outsider. Besides, the kingdom is an enormous place. I don’t know how large your world is, but you would get lost in mine.”

“We’ve got a whole planet here. Sun, moon, stars.”

Hoseok again laughs at Yoongi’s silly words. Hoseok kisses his hand and decides to keep him safe. There are some secrets Yoongi doesn’t need to know. “You understand how hard it would be to find me then. I just wish you not to worry, Yoongi.” He kisses the top of Yoongi’s head. “I would rather you safe but never see you again then ever have to put you in danger.”

“But-”

“I don’t want to discuss this matter any longer. It’ll only sadden me more for our goodbye,” Hoseok says it softly but Yoongi can tell that the subject pains him. Yoongi can tell that the end is final. It’s true that he doesn’t know what it’s like over there. It would break his heart for Hoseok to be disappointed in him. Then again, it would break his heart further not to see him. For now, he’ll let the subject rest.

“Please tell me about you, my love.”

“What’s there to know?” Yoongi asks. “I work in a shop, which isn’t what I thought I would spend my life doing. Even though I’ve always wanted to leave Wall, I’ve never actually been able to bring myself to. That guy who was looking for me earlier is my roommate. He and I are best friends all the way back to when we were kids. As kids, we always came to this festival every year. You were never here though, were you?”

“No,” Hoseok shakes his head. “This is my first time here. You would have heard me calling to you if I had been here before.”

“So did you… did you know about me? Did you know who I was? Before we met, did you know where to find me?”

Hoseok shakes his head, and then puzzles his eyebrows as he thinks of how best to explain it. He decides to tell Yoongi by kissing him. Yoongi finds it an interesting feeling, having knowledge given to him by being kissed.

Hoseok only knows basic magic. There are people in his world who can do everything from transforming people into animals to building whole houses in seconds. Hoseok can do very little. However, magic is boosted whenever someone’s soulmate is nearby. The power of love can make magic more powerful. That’s how Hoseok was able to call to Yoongi. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t be strong enough, and ordinarily, he wouldn’t be able to use any sort of magic here at all. However, Yoongi being so close has given Hoseok the ability to use some of his magic again, and that’s how he called to him.

Before today, Hoseok didn’t know Yoongi existed at all. He only ever knew he had a soulmate _somewhere_. He never knew what Yoongi would look like, what his name would be. He never even imagined that Yoongi would be in this world. Hoseok wouldn’t want him any other way. Yoongi is everything he could ever have asked for.

Yoongi blushes when he pulls away. He can see himself through Hoseok’s mind. Hoseok sees him as being far more beautiful than he actually is, and Yoongi again thinks of covering himself up.

“What about you?” Yoongi asks. He feels shy and naked, both figuratively and literally.

“My life is not so interesting,” Hoseok says, which is a bit of a lie, but he doesn’t want to trouble Yoongi with all of that. “I was bound and captured by Ditchwater when I was just a young boy.”

“Did you say dishwater?”

“No,” Hoseok smiles. He loves the little things about Yoongi. Yoongi is so innocent and unknowing of how dark and terrible Stormhold is. To Yoongi it’s just a place with magic, and Hoseok thinks that’s sweet. “Ditchwater Sal. She is the woman who owns me.”

“Don’t say that,” Yoongi winces. “Don’t say ‘owns’.”

Hoseok understands how hard of a word that is to confront. It’s terrible to be owned. He isn’t altogether treated inhumanely, except for being permanently bonded. He doesn’t suffer any physical abuse; he just doesn’t have freedom and has to do what he’s told. He’s glad Yoongi will never need to know it.

“What was your childhood like before?” Yoongi asks.

Hoseok has to choose his words carefully. “Well, I had many brothers. All my brothers wanted to take over the family business. They were always very jealous of me, because I was the youngest and the favorite of my father. I never thought too hard about what I wanted before I was bonded.”

“What will you do when you’re freed?”

 _If I’m freed_. “I rarely think about it. It’s not fair to give myself a false sense of hope.”

“Be more hopeful then,” Yoongi says and repeats it in his head so that Hoseok will hear it twice.

Hoseok hums softly and finds a warm spot in the crook of Yoongi’s neck to put his head. “What are your parents like, Yoongi?”

“Well, I was adopted, so I don’t really know what my parents are like.”

“Adoptive parents are still parents,” Hoseok smiles.

Yoongi nods. “They’re the kindest people in the world. You’d like them. I don’t think I’d trade them for the world. I wish I knew where I was really from, but I’m happy knowing that where I was brought was good. I’m so sorry that you were taken away from your family, Hoseok. That’s just awful. I would do anything to free you, you know. I would do anything to stop it from ever happening.”

“Truly, it’s not my family I miss,” Hoseok says. “They are a bit… competitive.” Or maybe homicidal is the word. “I just miss being able to travel on my own time and explore how I wanted to.”

Hoseok tells Yoongi a little bit more about himself as he kisses him. Yoongi learns about a childhood dog, and he laughs to himself, happy in the knowledge that they have dogs in Hoseok’s world.

Yoongi is radiant as Hoseok kisses him and he hopes that no one has ever seen Yoongi like this before. He feels very selfish of Yoongi. Despite knowing with close to certainty that they’ll never meet again, Hoseok feels pangs of jealousy at knowing that someone might come before or after him. He wants Yoongi to find happiness when he’s gone, even if it’s not with him, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.

Yoongi talks to him for what feels like hours. He’s sure that time slows down as a gift to them. Yoongi knows vaguely that midnight will make it all end, just like Cinderella. He can’t handle being Cinderella. He already knows who his prince is, and fears being ripped away from him. This isn’t how love stories are supposed to go. Love stories begin when you meet your true love. They’re not supposed to end right after the beginning. That just isn’t fair. Yoongi thinks that maybe if he holds onto Hoseok as tightly as he’s capable, then it won’t have to end. Midsummer will turn into an eternity of the two of them together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! If you liked this first chapter please please please leave me a comment and hit kudos! I'm super excited to write this fic and I need love and attention to thrive.
> 
> And by the way, if you liked this first chapter, here's where you can find my other Sope stuff:  
> [The Bachelor(s)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24168379/chapters/58204696): (WIP) Yoongi is the newest contestant on The Bachelor and he's determined not to take the show seriously. Falling for Hoseok is inevitable.  
> [Sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24827596): (One-shot) Yoongi is the sleeping prince and Hoseok is the castle gardener.  
> [The Ongoing Struggles of Being A Mall Gay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28154958): (Three-shot) Hoseok works at Build-A-Bear and Yoongi works at the Orange Julius that gives them discounts. Warning for gratuitous overuse of American mall culture.  
> 


	2. Stormhold and Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The King of Stormhold has died and left some fairly odd instructions on who should take the thrown. Meanwhile, Yoongi tries to negotiate how to live a life knowing about Hoseok but being without him.

The citadel of Stormhold stands on top of the tallest mountain. Stormhold is the largest, most powerful, most perfect, most beautiful and most everything else in all of the universe. That’s what the King and lawmakers will tell you anyway.

The people of the way back were very arrogant when they built the capital city. They built it up and up and up, on top of the mountain until no mountain underneath can be seen, only the citizens of Stormhold. The capital city – aptly named Capital – only holds a tiny percentage of the hundreds of millions of inhabitants of Stormhold. Of course, the poorest live on the base of the mountain, and the higher you go, the richer you get. At the very top is the richest and most powerful man of them all: the King himself. The King may have had a name at one point, but he’s just as arrogant of a man as the people who built his Kingdom, so now he simply refers to himself as the King of Stormhold.

At the very tippy top of the capital is the castle itself, and in the very tippy top of the castle is the King’s bed chamber. Unfortunately, at 105 years of age, the King has learned that being stubborn cannot defeat death. Before this night is over, he is absolutely certain he will die. The King calls upon his sons to be witness to his death, because there is the very huge matter of ascension: who becomes King once the King has died?

The King looks at the sons before him. None of them are particularly good looking. It’s certainly not the fault of his own genes. “I had eight sons once upon a time, but I’m left now with just four of you. What a shame,” he shakes his head. “I expected more from you, my sons. By the time my father died, I had already killed all twelve of my brothers. You three have been slacking.”

The three brother’s scoff. They’ve been trying their best. Well, except Primus, because he’s kind of a wuss. He’s never killed anyone. _Pathetic_. Septimus alone has killed three of his brothers.

“As you will all know, my favorite son is and will always be your youngest brother,” the King says. “What can I say? I loved his mother more than all of yours.” This is the most obvious statement that has ever been uttered by any tongue, because his youngest son is the only one not named after a number.

“Anyone want to take credit for killing him?” He asks. Septimus looks to Primus, and Primus looks to Tertius. They’re all silently asking one another if they did the deed. Septimus counts the brothers he’s killed on his hand, trying to remember if he’s missing one. He killed Sextus, Quintus, and Secondus, but he doesn’t _think_ he killed his youngest brother.

“Well, at least my sons aren’t liars,” the King says. “I can feel his life force still. He lives on somewhere. I wish I got to see him one more time before I died. I miss that boy. He was so much better than all of you. He always made me proud, even if he never did kill anyone. Though, it’s been nearly a decade since he disappeared, so maybe he’s made me proud on his own.” The old man looks wistfully at the ceiling for some time. “Ah well. My life on this plane is close to an end, and I believe Septimus has poisoned my drink anyway,” the King says. Septimus nods casually. He poisoned the drink before he knew his father was on his death bed, which feels like a waste of poison now. That stuff isn’t cheap, so it’s a bit of a tragedy.

“I don’t want any of you to be King. I don’t like you three,” the King says. “That is why my final act as King is this: the true King of Stormhold will be the one who can relight the ruby in this amulet. Only once the light is restored by someone of royal blood can anyone truly accept my crown.” The King pulls a necklace over his head. It’s a necklace that they’ve all seen him wear since they were boys. It’s always just been an ugly, gawdy trinket. The three brothers roll their eyes at the annoyance of having to complete a task. Shouldn’t it just be last man standing like it’s always been?

“How do you want us to do that?” Septimus asks.

The King jeers, “You’ll need a star.”

Tertius, who has never been the brightest amongst them nods as if he understands and then realizes he doesn’t understand. “Where do we get a star?” They certainly aren’t sold at the market or in a pub.

“Ah, they are very tricky things, stars. I know of only one, and your brother is in possession of it.” The three brothers all look at each other, putting their hands on the hilts of their swords, ready for a duel. “Not you three, you dumb bastards. Your youngest brother!”

“Oh,” Tertius says, “The youngest, of course! Remind me, what was his name?”

“You’re so stupid,” the King says. He looks very annoyed. It doesn’t do well to be annoyed on your death bed. It makes for a very unpleasant beginning to the afterlife. He turns his head towards Septimus. “Septimus,” he says, and motions towards Tertius with his eyes, signaling for him to do something. Septimus tries to decipher what message his father is trying to say for a few second before he nods, feeling silly. Septimus casually runs Tertius through with his sword and then lets his body fall to the ground with a thump.

“Oh, what fun!” the King says, sounding gleeful. One more son preceding him in death. “Just three of you left now. This race should be exciting!” He looks the happiest that he has in ages. The old man isn’t a very nice person, if that isn’t obvious.

“Father, can’t you just let us duel for the crown and have it be done with?” Primus asks. He hasn’t killed anyone yet, but if all he has to do is eliminate Septimus, he thinks he can probably do it. He’s been training to fight since he was a little kid, well before Septimus was even born. All of his brothers were trained on how to kill each other, but Primus has been slow on taking initiative. What can he say? He doesn’t really believe in killing other people just to gain power. He thinks he’d make a good King for that reason. For so many years, men of the royal line have been stabbed, poisoned, burned, drowned and other more creative causes of death. It would be interesting to instead not do that.

“I cannot reverse the process even if I wanted to. I have done what I had to in order to give your youngest brother a shot at the throne. If you want to be King, you need to prove your worth. Your task need not be difficult. Find your brother to find the star. When the amulet starts gleaming, the brother in possession of it will be the one true King of Stormhold.”

“Don’t worry father, I will be the King. I’ll make you proud,” Primus says. Septimus rolls his eyes. What does Primus think begging will do? All he does is make himself look a fool.

The King looks at his two sons disdainfully. “I hope you both fail, and your brother becomes King.” With that, he makes a face, coughs, and then promptly dies.

The two brothers look at him, and Septimus tilts his head. He pushes aside Tertius’ body and grabs the amulet from his fathers’ dead hand. He’s still warm but Septimus isn’t a sentimental man. Primus tries to push him out of the way and grabs for the amulet.

“Let go,” Septimus says in warning. Primus considers pulling the ‘older brother’ card but what good is that going to do against his most bloodthirsty brother.

“Why should I?” Primus responds.

“It’s not like you’re going to find the star, anyway, are you?” Septimus teases like they really are two little kids bickering.

“Won’t you stuff it?”

“Make me,” Septimus says. Both of them take one end of the necklace and start tugging on either side.

“Boys,” the Bishop interrupts. Neither of them ever heard him approach. “What do you think will happen if you break the necklace?”

The two of them look at each other loathingly and place the necklace in the Bishop’s awaiting hands.

“Come young sirs,” he says beckoning them into the next room. He needs to give instructions to these two before he can attend to fallen king. He doesn’t seem entirely surprised that Tertius is also dead on the floor, lying in a pool of his own blood. He’s worked for this family for long enough to know that corruption is the family name.

Septimus and Primus walk a few feet away from each other. Far enough distance that a sword wouldn’t reach. Neither of them take their eyes off of each other either. Their father, a ruthless man, keeps his war room right next to his bedroom. Over the course of the King’s reign, he was able to slaughter and dissolve the royal families of two neighboring Kingdoms to extend his reach over the world. It was probably one of his greatest wishes that his sons would take on the same mantle.

“Do _you_ remember his name?” Septimus asks, annoyed once they stand around a table.

“No, not really,” Primus scratches his head. The name is on the tip of his tongue. “J something? Might have been an S… or an H… or a Y?”

“Well, this is inconvenient,” Septimus frowns. “He disappeared so long ago that I stopped caring. How can father be so sure he’s not dead?”

“Do you think he was just fooling with us?”

“How do you mean? Like there’s no star out there at all or that our brother doesn’t have it?”

“Both. Neither. I don’t know.”

“Unlikely so,” the Bishop says. “Your fathers’ words are bound by magic. I’m afraid you cannot take this throne by force. You will need the star in order to become King. If your father was bluffing, I would tell you.”

“That’s not fair,” Septimus groans.

“If you don’t believe me, by all means go ahead and declare yourself King. However, when you drop dead for breaking a magical contract, I won’t be the one to perform your rites.” He makes a contemplative face and then says, “Actually, I will, but I will say I told you so to your dead body.”

“Holy men are supposed to speak softly.”

“I have bore witness to too many deaths at your hands, Septimus,” the Bishop replies. “I have no sympathy for you. Now you, Primus. It is unseemly of me to say so, but I hope your quest is more successful.”

Primus beams at him happily. At least he’s got someone on his side.

Septimus rolls his eyes. “So what have you to report to us about this mission?”

“It is as the King explained it. Your brother has the star. Once it shines before this amulet, the ruby will be restored and turn to the red color it once was centuries ago,” The gem inside of the necklace is clear and dull. They both assumed it was just a very old, very boring diamond. “It is unlikely either of you can succeed. Your father conceived this plan with the goal of handing the throne to your lost brother.”

“Damn it! Do _you_ remember his name?”

The Bishop shrugs. “That is not for me to divulge.” Also, he doesn’t remember the lost brothers name either.

Primus is invested in his own thoughts right now. He really should remember his brother’s name. It’s so unbrotherly for him to have forgotten. He lost a whole name! And the face. That’s just rude. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to find his brother when he doesn’t remember the name or the face. How many years ago did he go missing? A decade? Maybe a little less. He would be in his early twenties by now. But what was his name?

Primus wonders why he went missing in the first place and how his father knows he’s still alive. He really did always love that son the best. All of Primus’ brothers have a different mother, and the youngest had the favorite mother and therefor was the favorite child. Maybe if Primus discovers who the mother was, he’ll be able to find the son. What if he doesn’t want to be found? Could it be possible that he knows exactly how to become King and he’s just hiding out to make his move?

“Stop thinking so hard, it makes you look like an idiot,” Septimus says. He’s glaring at him from across the table. He doesn’t seem to have the intention to kill him right now, but that’s probably because he wants information from him. Given that Primus is the kindest brother, he’s the most likely to remember things about his siblings. That’s not the case right now, but it stands to reason. Septimus will probably attempt to get him with a truth serum before killing him, so Primus should certainly not eat or drink anything until he is miles away from here with a party of men he trusts.

Primus thinks back to his childhood. He was too young to remember Secondus or Tertius being born, but he has a vague memory of the others. He remembers the feeling of all of a sudden having a fifth, sixth, a seventh brother. Then there was the eighth. Father always said he was special. The second he was born, none of his other children mattered to him anymore. Primus was once the favorite. Septimus also had a brief period where he was the favorite, but it was short lived because he’s only a few years older than the last one. As soon as the youngest was born, no one else mattered in their father’s eyes.

Quite frankly, Primus was happy when he disappeared. He thought it would give him a chance to appeal to his father again, maybe convince him that he, as the eldest, rightly deserved the throne, but instead of seeing his remaining sons as his heirs, they were just unfortunate mistakes he made in an effort to make the perfect son. The King was already bitter, but he became cruel once the youngest son had disappeared. He kicked everyone out of the castle to find their own homes, preferring it to be lonely than full of sons he didn’t even like.

That boy was always strange. He acted and behaved differently from everyone else. He was probably 12 or 13 when he went missing, but before that, he never wanted to learn how to fight or wield a sword. He had no interest in his brothers and didn’t seem to care how much the King loved him. He simply wandered around the gardens and repeated fairy tales to himself. He spent too much time on his studies and not enough time learning how to become a King. It was almost like he never cared about being royal at all.

A memory of him comes to Primus with a sudden force. His eyes open widely, and he pulls a smirk onto his face. _That’s_ a piece of information Septimus surely won’t have.

“What? What is it!” Septimus says.

Primus starts to laugh and the both of them look at him like he’s crazy.

“I know something you don’t know!” Primus says, hopping from one foot to the other.

“Tell me willingly or I’ll find a way to get it out of you,” Septimus says, pulling his sword from its sheath. It’s got an almost dry blood stain from their recently deceased brother, but Primus isn’t afraid. He’s not sure which one of them would ultimately outmatch the other, but it would be a very close duel.

“Hmm, let me see,” he says, pretending to consider Septimus. In a split second, Primus decides to make a run for it. Before the Bishop or his brother realize that anything is happening, Primus snatches the necklace from the Bishop’s hand and runs from the room. He can feel Septimus giving chase but he can’t afford looking back so he leaps from the room to the winding staircase of the tower. He takes the steps as quickly as possible with the sound of an angry, probably sword wielding younger brother behind him.

At the very bottom of the tower Primus finds a few of his men and a few of Septimus’. “Block the door!” he screams and keeps running. Immediately, he hears the two of them grab for the door and then a loud thump from the other side when Septimus runs straight into it. He decides that he’s willing to sacrifice the aid of his two men and tells them to hold it. He has another five men who have sworn absolute allegiance to him waiting for him outside the castle with his horses.

★★★★★★

Yoongi wakes up under the sun. He’s completely blinded by it and has to put his hands over his eyes when the sun hurts him. He feels very warm, like he’s been under the sun for hours. Yoongi attempts to pull up his blanket, and then he realizes that he has no blanket. That’s odd. He must have kicked it off in his sleep. Yoongi opens his eyes again and then tries to rationalize how the sun got to be in his bedroom anyhow.

Yoongi sits up almost immediately when he realizes he’s lying on the grass. He looks around him, feeling like a total idiot when he sees the grounds where just a few hours ago was the Midsummer festival. Behind him, some distance away he sees the old stone wall and he groans. He takes a couple of minutes before all the things that happened last night come back to him.

He remembers Hoseok after too many seconds and that sends him into a feeling of utter despair. All of the things that Hoseok said, all of the magical things he felt. It wasn’t magic that made Yoongi fall in love with him. But Yoongi is just lying here on the grass with no Hoseok in sight.

Yoongi learned so many amazing things last night. The other side of the wall is an entirely different world. It’s something he never could have dreamed of existing. What had Hoseok called it again? Stormhold? Somewhere behind that wall Hoseok is thinking of him. Yoongi can’t hear his voice in his mind, but he knows that Hoseok is thinking of him.

He jumps to his feet quickly and searches around himself. There’s no trace of… anything. No caravans, no wagons, no people, no horses. There’s not even any trash. Below him, there barely appears to be any indication that anyone has tread on this grass in months. How can it all just be gone? How can Hoseok be gone?

Yoongi remembers the heat of Hoseok’s body pressed against his. The way they held each other and fit against one another makes his cheeks blush violently and he panics for just the briefest of seconds before he looks down and sees that he’s wearing clothes. Thank god. He probably would have been arrested by now if he was lying naked in a field. Yoongi spins around several times, feeling desperate. Part of him thought that Hoseok would somehow find a way to stay here with him. He doesn’t recall falling asleep last night, but he can feel where Hoseok’s arms were. He doesn’t know what else there is to do so he runs towards the wall.

Until a day ago, Yoongi has always found it very strange that Wall employs a guard to stand watch at the gap in the wall 24/7. Yoongi thought it was just a stupid quirk about their town. Now he looks at the old man in a new light. He approaches the man, who doesn’t seem to even notice Yoongi. As kids, everyone would monkey around with the guard, but no one ever jumped the wall because he’s a lot quicker and stronger than he looks. You could never make it more than a few steps over the wall before he’d catch you and throw you back. Yoongi never even managed a foot over the wall.

“Excuse me?” Yoongi asks, squinting at him.

Instead of saying anything, the man just raises an eyebrow. He has stood in front of this wall, day in and day out for well over fifty years, and before him, there was someone else. Yoongi doesn’t even know if he eats or sleeps. He only guards the gap, and even though there’s no explanation for how Yoongi knows it, it’s quite clear to him that the gap is the doorway. What waits beyond there? When will he get to find out?

“Good morning,” Yoongi nods kindly to the man.

“Morning,” his voice is gruff and he pays Yoongi little mind.

“I was wondering if you… err, uh, the… the festival. Do you know more about it than you let on?” Yoongi asks.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, that I know what’s beyond the wall,” Yoongi says. “I’m wondering if you do.”

The man looks at Yoongi for the first time with genuine confusion. Does he really not know? Is it possible that he’s guarded this place for all this time and truly has no idea why he’s guarding it?

“I haven’t the foggiest,” he says.

“Then why do you guard it?” he asks.

“Just do,” he says.

“Don’t you ever wonder why you guard it?” Yoongi asks.

“I do what I have to do,” he says.

“Will you let me cross?” Yoongi asks, and that’s the first thing he’s said that puts the guard on alert.

“I’m afraid not, boy,” he says.

Yoongi holds his hands out defensively and backs away a few feet. He’s seen what this old man can do with his walking stick and he’s not willing to risk it. At least, not right now.. “Okay, sorry, sorry. I’ll just be going.”

The guard nods, shooing Yoongi off. Yoongi feels weird as he leaves him. He doesn’t feel entirely like himself right now. He’s still lost in Hoseok. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe everything else in his life was fake and it was only Hoseok that was real.

The sun is far too bright for him, and he squints as he makes his way back to his apartment. The things he passes don’t make sense to him. He sees a mailbox, a man walking his dog, and a McDonalds and none of them can be real things. Real things are Hoseok’s skin, his hair, his eyes, his little star birthmark.

Yoongi doesn’t remember what day it is. He also doesn’t care what time it is. His steps are almost painful. The weight of being away from Hoseok is unbearable. Their time together was so brief but it was more substantial than any relationship he’s ever had. Not just romantically, either. Yoongi thinks he bonded more with Hoseok in three hours than he has in twenty-ish years of knowing Seokjin. For starters, Yoongi has done a very good job of never having seen Seokjin naked. Despite living with him since starting college and being in locker rooms with him in high school, he has avoided it. That’s just a small thing that he has to make not of, though. On a mental level, no one has ever understood him the way Hoseok did, and it’s not just because Hoseok could read his mind a little bit.

Yoongi walks up the stairs to his apartment, still very groggy. This is the world that Yoongi has known for 23 years, but after last night, this is the world that he doesn’t understand. This is a world without magic and without Hoseok. It doesn’t make sense for this to be reality when Hoseok isn’t in it.

Yoongi pats over his pockets, feeling for his keys. He pulls them out and looks at them in his hand for a moment. This is the knife he had tried to use to cut Hoseok’s bonds. He feels a sinking feeling. It feels hopeless, like he really is fated never to meet his soulmate again. He refuses to let that thought fester. He will do everything to find him again. It’s his duty as a human and as the person made for Hoseok.

He opens the door, his heart feeling desperate. He’s never experienced a sadness like this. He’s never lost anyone close to him before. He doesn’t know how to handle losing the love of his life before he even got to know him.

Yoongi can still hear the sound of his voice in his head. He can feel the way that Hoseok’s kiss healed him of all sadness. He remembers the way Hoseok would call him ‘my love’ and Yoongi’s entire insides would tingle. He likes the way that Hoseok’s warm eyes could look right into him. Without his gaze, his touch, his kiss, all Yoongi knows is the sadness.

As soon as he opens the door and closes it behind himself, he hears Seokjin sprinting in from his bedroom. Yoongi doesn’t know what’s happening until Seokjin is pulling him into the tightest hug he’s felt in years.

“Where the fuck were you, asshole?” Seokjin asks. His grip is so tight that Yoongi struggles to take in the air he needs to breathe let alone the air to speak.

“Too tight,” he winces, and Seokjin lets go. He hits Yoongi over the head and then hugs him again.

“You scared the shit out of me Yoongi. I’m glad you’re okay, but I hate you right now. What is this in your hair?” he asks. Yoongi expects him to pick out pieces of grass, but instead, Seokjin pulls the snowdrop out of his hair and looks at it. Yoongi’s eyes widen and he takes the flower out of Seokjin’s hand.

“It’s mine!” he says, holding it, trying to let his heart rest the realization that he could have lost it. He forgot it was there, he could have easily dropped it in the grass and he never would have found it. Yoongi half-expects it to be warm, like it contains parts of Hoseok, but it isn’t. It’s just a flower. If Hoseok’s right, it will never die so long as he remembers him. Yoongi would have a hard time forgetting that perfect man.

“You idiot,” Seokjin says, hugging him again. “I didn’t know what had happened to you! It’s not like you to pull a disappearing act. I thought you might have gotten yourself killed by one of those carnies, Yoongi! I was ready to call the police!”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi says.

“Sorry? _Sorry_? You disappeared! You literally vanished into thin air! I looked for you for hours! I called you about a hundred times, but you didn’t pick up. I thought you came back here, but you weren’t here, and then I went back and still couldn’t find you!”

Yoongi looks at him confused. He doesn’t remember getting any phone calls. He pulls out his phone and then remembers! The picture! He took a picture of Hoseok.

He pushes away the notification of all the missed phone calls from Seokjin and his parents. Uh oh, Seokjin might have notified his parents that he was missing. His mom is probably going to slamming on the door any second to make sure her baby is okay. He’ll worry about that in a minute. Right now, what’s important is opening up his photos. He doesn’t know why he expects the picture not to be there. Maybe he expects it to have magically disappeared like the festival did. Nevertheless, he feels weight fall from his shoulder as he finds the picture.

There he is. Perfect Hoseok. He looks exactly as Yoongi remembers him. Yoongi’s memory of him is as the most beautiful man in the universe. The memory of him does him wrong. Hoseok is far more beautiful than any memory can ever capture. Yoongi’s mouth opens in amazement. Is that really him? Is that truly his Hoseok? Yoongi doesn’t deserve a man that beautiful. That’s his soulmate. Their hearts were cut from the same cloth.

“He _was_ real,” Yoongi says to himself. Not like he ever thought for a moment that last night was a dream, but it’s still a relief to have solid proof of it.

“He?” Seokjin asks. “Who is he?” Seokjin grabs the phone out of Yoongi’s hand to look at it and then he starts to look really angry. “He! Him? You ditched me for a _guy!_ You had me believing you were kidnapped or dead so that you could have a one-night stand!”

“No no, that’s not what happened,” Yoongi shakes his head and feels himself gasp painfully. Oh no. It’s going to happen. He isn’t sure how he was able to hold back the tears until now, but he can’t do it for any longer. Hoseok is gone. He doesn’t know when he’ll get to see him again. Maybe he’ll never get to see him again. He barely knows anything about Hoseok. Instead of making the sting lesser, not knowing enough about him makes it worse. There are so many things he didn’t get to learn.

Yoongi’s eyes erupt into tears, and he just about collapses. He manages to make into one of the dining room chairs before he puts his face in his hands and starts crying harder than he can ever remember crying before.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Seokjin says. He doesn’t know what to do with this situation. Yoongi is crying and he’s not sure what happened. Something to do with this guy on his phone? “Yoongi, are you okay? Well, I guess obviously not. But what’s wrong?”

“H-Hoseok,” Yoongi says. That name is so perfect. That name is the reason for why language was invented. Yoongi wants to say it to him right now, but he’s not here.

“Is that this guy?” Seokjin asks. He realizes he still has Yoongi’s phone and slides it back to him.

“Jin, he was m-my,” Yoongi is having trouble breathing between sobs. “H-he was my s-soulmate.”

“Soulmate?” Seokjin says, very taken aback. “Yoongi… I’d like to tell you there’s more fish in the sea, but all you did was put your foot in a puddle.”

“No! No!” Yoongi says, a spike of rage ripping through him. He lifts his head up to look at Seokjin, and Yoongi can tell he doesn’t look great based on the way Seokjin’s eyes are pitying him. He can feel his nose running and his eyes must already be red and puffy. “He was. I know he was. I felt it. He felt it too.”

“Yoongi,” Seokjin shakes his head. “You met this guy last night.”

“I know what I know. I love him.”

“You don’t even _know_ him!”

If Yoongi wasn’t so depressed, he’d probably be able to understand where Seokjin is coming from on this. To him, it seems like Yoongi really has just gone crazy over a boy, but that’s not what happened and Yoongi is too invested in his own spiraling to care about explaining.

“I love him,” is all Yoongi is able to say.

“Then where is he now?”

“He had to go.” It’s a poor explanation and Yoongi knows it.

“Then when is he coming back?”

“I don’t think… I don’t think that he can.”

Seokjin groans loudly. “Seriously, Yoongi? What kind of excuse is that? If he liked you too, he would be here. But he’s not. He ditched you, Yoongi. He told you whatever he wanted you to hear so he could get whatever he wanted out of you, and then he left you.” Seokjin realizes it’s a bit harsh but it’s too late.

“Shut up!” Yoongi snaps. Seokjin flinches at his tone and the way that the chair scratches against the wood as Yoongi pushes himself out of it. “You know how rational of a person I am, Seokjin. I’m always the skeptic between us. I’ve always been rational. I always keep my feet on earth because people gave me so much shit about being different as a kid. So when I tell you that I know what I felt, you need to accept that. You need to just fucking accept that.”

Seokjin cowers. Yoongi has never yelled at him like this before. They’ve gotten into arguments, sure, but that’s been over things that one or both of them did wrong. This is completely new to him. Seokjin doesn’t get a chance to say anything more because Yoongi storms away from him. The door to his room slams shut, leaving Seokjin to stand in the dining room, very confused and _very_ worried.

Seokjin knows he should probably just leave Yoongi to mope. Actually, that’s not at all what he should do. Yoongi is an ornery bastard who gets caught up in his own head a lot. He tries to project himself as one thing when he’s full of winding scaffolds underneath the surface. Clearly, something _did_ happen last night. What that something was probably has nothing to do with Yoongi ‘finding his soulmate’ but nevertheless, it’s a situation he needs to tiptoe around.

It’s just not like Yoongi to be caught on a boy like this. Yoongi’s never once had a serious relationship, or any relationship at all before. He’s most definitely never had sex. Is it possible that he did yesterday? Could Yoongi actually have thrown it all at this guy – this Hoseok? That’s so out of character for him. Yoongi really does value his rationality more than anything. Yoongi brags about how his head is on straight even if his sexuality isn’t. He’s not spontaneous, he’s not particularly romantic, and he’s not a people person. So what could possibly have happened last night? Should Seokjin be more worried about him than he is already?

He heads to Yoongi’s door. They picked out this apartment specifically because they don’t share a wall between their rooms. It’s been valuable not having to listen to whatever music, conversations, or porn that the other engages in, which was a point of contention in their college apartment.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin knocks on his door to hear Yoongi crying. “Yoongi, I made a mistake.”

“Piss off!” Yoongi shouts. He can’t believe how easy to shrug him off Seokjin had been. He didn’t even consider Yoongi’s feelings before telling him that what he felt was stupid, and that’s something that Yoongi can’t handle in his fragile state. Sure, it’s a little ridiculous for Yoongi to disappear for a few hours and then remerge claiming to have found his soulmate, but the least that Seokjin could do is hear him out. Seokjin thinks he knows how the world works and he’s stubborn in his ways. Maybe someone could have said the same of Yoongi 36 hours ago, but that Yoongi doesn’t seem like the same person as what he feels inside of himself right now. Yoongi was a person waiting to hatch, but everything is different now. The world is grey hues and rough edges.

“Yoongi, I want to make sure you’re alright. You’re acting strangely.”

“I’m fine and I don’t need you.”

Seokjin rests his head on the other side of the door in defeat. “Is there something you do need?” he asks. “Like alcohol? Or ice cream?”

There’s only one thing in the world Yoongi wants or needs right now and he’s on the other side of the wall. His mind flashes to last night every time he closes his eyes, even just to blink. He can feel the way Hoseok’s touch electrified his skin and the softness of his lips and the way he was so gentle. Yoongi chokes on his own sob and presses himself into his pillow. He’s never realized before how awful his bed is. It’s small, boring, and cold. It needs someone else in order for it to feel welcoming. 

He can’t believe how easy it is to believe everything Hoseok said. Because it _feels_ true. There’s no rational way of explaining it, but Yoongi knows that everything he felt last night was perfectly real. Hoseok is his goddamn soulmate. He’s the only person in the world Yoongi could ever love the way he already does.

He wants to know everything. In a second he could glean every part of Hoseok’s personality, because it’s so… _there_. Even when Hoseok wasn’t telling him stories in the way he kissed him, Yoongi was reading the stories anyway. He knows that Hoseok is colorful and not nearly as soft spoken as his first impression gives off. He’s wise and sweet, but there’s a very real seriousness to him. He’ll probably be different when Yoongi frees him. Underneath it all, Yoongi can sense a bubbly, outgoing person, but that person has been stifled for so long by a chain. In short, Hoseok is perfect. Yoongi has never made a checklist before but Hoseok would tick off every box, and he supposes that’s what a “soulmate” is anyway, right?

Yoongi realizes in an instant that his body feels all wrong. It’s like being sore and being tired but nothing is actually wrong with him physically. He aches and feels like ripping off entire appendages because nothing should be like this. He should be with his soulmate instead of here. His skin is gross and uncomfortable because Hoseok should be here to hold him.

“Yoongi, we’ll talk about it later, won’t we?” Seokjin asks, still on the other side of the door. “I want you to tell me about him.”

“Go away,” Yoongi says to him and throws a pillow at his door. He can hear Seokjin sigh and then retreat.

Yeah, eventually they’ll talk it out. Yoongi always tells him everything, and the same is true for Seokjin. Yoongi hasn’t kept a secret from him in the nearly two decades they’ve been friends. Somehow, he’s going to have to convince Seokjin that everything that happened last night was real. It’s not going to be easy, but nothing is as difficult as the terror creeping through that wonders if Hoseok was right. What happens if he never gets to see him again?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay first and foremost: HAPPY BELATED HOBI DAY!!!! I hope it was a good one and you thought about our wonderful, beautiful boy as much as possible.
> 
> Today's comment prompt is for you to tell me your favorite mythical creature or cryptid (maybe you'll even get to see them in this fic, who knows?)


	3. Belief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoongi and Hoseok are both whipped.

“Okay,” Yoongi says. He’s had a few hours to recover but he doesn’t feel great. His eyes feel sunken into his head and his head is throbbing with what is sure to be a migraine so big he’ll have to call in sick tomorrow. He wishes he had taken a nap but trying to explain what happened to him last night seems more important.

Seokjin is sitting across from him looking more worried than Yoongi can ever recall seeing him. And that’s including the first time Yoongi got black out drunk and puked for like three hours straight. Though in fairness, Yoongi wasn’t entirely aware of that because he was literally out of his body the whole time. He doesn’t do that anymore, thank god, but he probably needs a drink right now in order to get through his emotions.

“Okay,” Seokjin repeats.

“I’ll explain it all, but you can’t say anything while I do,” Yoongi says. A lesser friendship than their own could be dissolved by the conversation that he’s about to have with Seokjin, but they’ll make it through, he’s sure. Or… he hopes.

“That’s so ominous.” Seokjin always tries to add humor to the situation even though it doesn’t feel appropriate. Yoongi appreciates that he doesn’t have the same look on his face as before.

“I really just need you to open up your imagination to what all I’m about to tell you.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Even if it sounds crazy.”

“Oh god, what did you get yourself into?” Seokjin asks the ceiling rather than him.

“Just shut up and hear me out.” Yoongi takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly. He pulls out his phone and unlocks it. He’s already made Hoseok his background, but he opens the full photo so there aren’t apps all over his face. It’s not a great photo, because it was pretty dark in that little caravan, but it does the trick. There was only a small candle in there, but there’s a soft white light that seems to also be coming from the room. Any lighting would be flattering to a face like Hoseok’s.

“He’s cute,” Seokjin says, trying to get back onto Yoongi’s good side. Yoongi rolls his eyes, because Hoseok is the reason faces were invented. Calling him “cute” is so much of an understatement that it’s almost derogatory.

“His name is Hoseok,” Yoongi says, and instantly, saying the name makes him feel lighter. Not being with him is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to face but getting to at least look at him and say his name is going to keep him sane.

“Alright, here’s where I start to say things that are going to make me sound crazy. I’m not going to sugarcoat or ease into it; I’m just going to dive straight in, so prepare yourself,” He says and then immediately forgets how to form cohesive sentences. How does he tell this story? Does he bring up the magic first or talk about the way he feels for Hoseok? “Basically… so Hoseok is… well-”

“Did you lose your virginity to him?” Seokjin’s question seems to come out of nowhere and Yoongi is caught off guard. His mouth opens and closes like a little guppy a few times before he finds his tongue.

“I thought we agreed that virginity is a concept!”

“It is a concept!” Seokjin says. “But did you?”

“I don’t know why that’s your business,” Yoongi replies.

“Because I told you when I lost mine!” Seokjin says. Yoongi remembers that. In vivid detail. Seokjin didn’t need to use so many adjectives.

“Okay, yeah,” Yoongi says. “A bit.”

Seokjin nods and takes several long moments. “Alright, I guess I know what the stakes are now, because that is not like you at all.”

“Thank you?” They’re a sex positive household, but Yoongi is very boring when it comes to romance. And that’s because he’s never been in a relationship. Not ever. Seokjin has had two or three boyfriends, only one of which Yoongi approved of. If Yoongi really did sleep with this Hoseok character, that means that he is must have been something outlandishly special.

“Just go on with your story. What about this guy made you do it? Not like I don’t trust your judgment,” he _doesn’t_ trust Yoongi’s judgment at all right now, “But I seriously don’t understand how the guy who’s barely kissed anyone could all of a sudden have a one-night stand.”

“I told you it wasn’t like that.”

“Okay, maybe not a one-night stand, but I never thought you would sleep with someone you just met that day.” He pretty much assumed that he’d have to make Yoongi a Tinder profile if he ever wants to be a best man. Maybe Yoongi’s waiting to be a real adult before he finds a boyfriend. If that were true, that wouldn’t explain him disappearing last night. Yoongi not returning his phone call is the most irresponsible thing he’s ever done, which goes to show how very responsible Yoongi is.

“Hoseok is… different. Hoseok is perfect,” Yoongi says. He closes his eyes to remember him. God, he really did know exactly what to say and where to touch him. Yoongi is so irrevocably in love with him that he doesn’t know how to bear it. 24 hours ago, he hadn’t met Hoseok, and yet here he is, ready to risk it all for him. “Let me get to the crazy part now, okay? Promise you won’t interrupt?”

“Fine.”

“Hoseok is from the other side of the wall.” Seokjin nods. That doesn’t seem that crazy to him. Sure, he doesn’t know what’s on the other side, but it’s probably just some small village or something. Maybe they’re Amish. “In fact, all the people from the Midsummer festival are from the other side of the wall.”

“I guess that tracks.”

“I told you not to interrupt.” Seokjin holds his hands up in self-defense and Yoongi continues. “The other side of the wall is… not like our side. What I mean is, oh god, I don’t know how to put it. There’s no way you’ll believe me, but I’m just going to say it anyway. It’s magic, Seokjin. It’s like full on fantasy movie, Narnia style magic over there.” Seokjin’s eyebrow raises, but he says nothing. “We’re talking like witches, wizards, probably unicorns type shit.”

Again, Seokjin just blinks at him. Yoongi doesn’t know if this is going well or not. “Hoseok, he… when I walked off, when I disappeared, it was because I heard him calling to me. I didn’t know who he was or what was happening before I heard his voice. I just all of a sudden heard him and I knew I had to find out what was happening. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. I was in the same boat as you thinking magic wasn’t real. But then I saw him for the first time. God, you should’ve seen him. I wish you could even kind of understand what I’m talking about. Because I saw him for the first time and I thought the world had just started. It was like all of a sudden, I knew what I’m here for. I fell in love in an instant.

“He could talk to me in my head, it was so weird. Then he kissed me, and it was like… he just was able to tell me a story when he kissed me. He told me about his side of the wall without ever saying anything out loud, I just all of a sudden knew. I knew about him, I knew about Stormhold – that’s what the other side of the wall is called – I knew about him and me. I knew that he and I were soulmates. Totally, completely, fully soulmates. Like destined to be together soulmates.”

Yoongi stops for the first time to assess Seokjin. He has a blank expression on his face.

“You don’t believe me, I get it. Why would anyone believe me? But it was real. It was more real than you sitting there right now. Hoseok was perfect. He was warm and nice and kind. We talked for hours and made out and, you know…” Yoongi doesn’t even care if he sounds insane, because it feels so good to say out loud and relive him. He could probably write a whole book about the minutes that they shared. He thinks he remembers every last word Hoseok said to him. Mostly, he remembers Hoseok saying “my love” and Yoongi’s insides burning from it.

“But the problem is that Hoseok was captured by this witch. I guess she uses him as a servant, and he was tied with this little chain around his ankle. I tried to cut it but it just grew back. He told me that he can only come to this side of the wall once a year, and he,” Yoongi stops. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the last part of what Hoseok said, but in order for Seokjin to understand the gravity of the situation he has to. “He said that I may never see him again.”

Yoongi pauses and then decides that he needs to stop his story now to make sure that Seokjin is still paying attention. There’s not much more to tell without getting into more private things. Yoongi told Hoseok all about his friendship with Seokjin. That’s because Seokjin is the most important person in his life. What will Seokjin think when they meet? Yoongi has to convince him that he’s even real before Seokjin will be able to meet him.

Yoongi needs for Seokjin to understand. It’s hard to believe, but it’s not impossible. Yoongi can’t stand people judging him again, especially not his best friend in the whole world. He does everything he can to be normal, and now he’s scared that this is going to change how Seokjin sees him.

However, Seokjin isn’t saying anything. Yoongi looks at him, and it’s as if he’s frozen. He waves a hand in front of his face, and Seokjin’s forehead wrinkles up in concern.

“Yoongi, I need you to understand that I’m not being funny with you or anything. I’m not going to say this in a mean way at all, because I really care about you. But do you need some sort of help?”

Yoongi closes his eyes and fumes at the ears. “I don’t. Thank you for your concern, but I’m not delusional. There’s nothing wrong with me. What happened to me last night happened. I don’t have proof of it, and I know that, but it was very, very real.”

Seokjin takes a deep breath and puts his head in his hands. “Okay, Yoongi. I believe that you met this Hoseok guy last night. I believe that. But Yoongi, soulmates aren’t real. Magic isn’t real. There’s nothing on the other side of the wall.”

“I know that you believe that, and up until yesterday I would have said the same thing. But you have no clue what I experienced yesterday. No clue. He is real, and he is amazing. He’s somewhere on the other side of the wall right now thinking of me. The only thing about this story that’s hard to believe is how we could be so lucky as to have each other.”

“But you don’t have him, Yoongi. I don’t know how he did all those things, how he tricked you, but he just said and did what he wanted you to hear. Nothing you just said is possible.”

Yoongi shakes his head. “You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong. I just wish there was some way for me to show you that. To make you understand. How could any of what I just said have happened if it weren’t real? He lit a flame in midair! He spoke to me in my head! What alternative explanations do you have for that?”

“Yoongi, if you were drugged or something-”

“I wasn’t!”

“But you should still see a doctor, okay?”

“I’m not crazy. I’m not!”

Seokjin looks so worried but all Yoongi feels is anger. It’s unnatural for the two of them to be angry with each other. “I didn’t say you were. How about we start out with just a regular doctor, okay? Just someone who can test your blood to see if you were drugged.”

“And what happens when they tell me I wasn’t? Then will you believe me?”

“Yoongi, it’s just that it’s not possible. You recognize that it’s not possible, which is a good thing, but something else happened to you. It could have been something you ate or drank. Or maybe inhaled, I don’t know. I’m just worried for you.”

“Why would I make this up?”

“I don’t think you’re making it up!” Seokjin says, trying to assure him. “I just think that something happened to you last night that is scary. I don’t know if you were drugged, hypnotized or what, but I’m scared. I love you a lot, Yoongi, and I don’t want to see you spiraling over this.”

Yoongi’s jaw is firm and he refuses to look at him. He gets that it sounds fake. He understands that. But Seokjin should have a little bit of imagination. Seokjin believes in ghosts and yet he isn’t able to believe in something that makes sense.

“What scares you the most? The idea that I’m right?”

Seokjin doesn’t know anything other than worry, and he hates it. He hates feeling like this, because Yoongi is intelligent, and strong. He always sticks up for what he believes in and he’s never said a rude word against anyone. But here is, behaving like an entirely different person, and there’s no way for Seokjin to reason with him.

“What I’m worried about is that you believe yourself too much. I care about you and I’ll always help you no matter what. Need to hide a body? I’m there for you, no questions asked. But if you were to say this stuff to someone else, they’d have you committed.”

“I’m not crazy,” Yoongi says. “Look me in the eyes.”

“Yoongi-”

“Why can’t you just believe me?” Yoongi asks. “I know it’s hard to comprehend, but if I’m telling you this with as much seriousness as I am right now, you should believe me.”

“If there was something on the other side of that wall, someone would have discovered it by now! The whole world would know. We would have invaded it, probably. That’s not the kind of thing that can stay hidden.”

“But it’s magic! And don’t try to tell me magic isn’t real.”

“Yoongi,” Seokjin’s face is somber as he looks at his friend. Yoongi hates the pity in his eyes. There’s nothing in the world Yoongi hates more than being pitied. He’s been pitied all of his life and he’s had enough. He was abandoned as a baby boohoo, and he was bullied for being different. But he’s over that. He’s done with being the weirdo who people pity because it’s convenient. This seems inevitable but it’s also unfair. Has he always been on this course? Surely, if Hoseok is his soulmate, everything else before today was destined to set him up for all these moments.

Well, destiny wants him to never see Hoseok again. That’s why they were placed in two different worlds. But Yoongi doesn’t accept that fate. He doesn’t accept Seokjin’s disbelief, and he doesn’t accept that the black and white world he lives in is the rational one. Nothing can ever be the same that it was before meeting Hoseok, and he has no intention of going back to “normal.”

“What if I take you to the other side of the wall? What if I show you exactly how real it all is?”

★★★★★★

Hoseok is struggling to do any of his chores. Three days since meeting Yoongi and his entire life has been reset. He struggles to pour water for Ditchwater, to make her food, and to obey even the simplest of commands. She throws cookware at him whenever he’s got drifting off. He can’t really help it though. Yoongi is thinking about him. Yoongi is in his other universe thinking about him. He had a fancy little piece of metal which he was able to capture Hoseok’s image on, but Hoseok doesn’t have that. He has only his memory to conjure up pictures of him from.

Yoongi was everything and more. Far more than he ever would have imagined. Hoseok had come to believe he didn’t have a second half. No one out there could ever be his. Most people never meet their soulmates, and it’s possible that some people don’t even have one. It’s rare to actually come across the one person you’re made for. Hoseok just can’t comprehend that he does have one, and that he’s in the worst possible location to ever see him again. Yoongi has no idea about anything. He has no clue about magic. He doesn’t even know how special he is. Yoongi doesn’t know where he comes from.

He wishes so much that he could’ve told him everything there is to know. Hoseok wishes he could’ve explained why Yoongi can’t come to this side of the wall. He wishes that nothing was as it is now.

Hoseok has always looked at his chain and thought of ways to break his binding. He can’t kill Ditchwater himself because her magic prevents him from it. He doesn’t hate her, not really. She’s not terrible to him. Sure, she’s a little cranky and she does basically keep him as her slave, but his situation could be a whole lot worse than it is. All that being said, he would still prefer her dead. Not because he’s vengeful, but because it’s the only way he’ll ever have freedom, because she’ll never release him of her own accord.

If he were free, how would he find Yoongi again? No one ever leaves Stormhold. He doesn’t know what lies beyond it, aside from Yoongi. They have strange magic, strange words. Yoongi talked in a way that Hoseok didn’t understand, but he loved it anyway. He said that Hoseok sounds old-timey, which means that Yoongi sounds futuristic.

Hoseok misses his magic. He was never very good at magic and he was always told to keep it secret. Even his father never knew he was magical, because his mother, before she passed, forbade him from telling anyone. Magic isn’t outlawed, but people with it are often stereotyped as evil crones. There are enough evil witches out there that Hoseok did as his mother asked. So now, the only person alive who knows he’s even got magic is Yoongi. A whole lot of good that’s going to do him.

He knows he’ll never see Yoongi again. That’s quite obvious. Hoseok is going to die under Ditchwater’s captivity, and he accepted that a long time ago. For Yoongi’s sake, it’s a good thing that they’ll never meet again. But Hoseok living in constant sadness without him is going to be rough. He shouldn’t have to be separate from the man he loves, even if he only knew him for a few hours. But at least Yoongi will be safe. As long as he’s never here in Stormhold, he’ll be safe.

He hopes that Yoongi moves on from him. If Hoseok was more selfless, he never would have called out to him on Midsummer. He could have left Yoongi alone to never know about him. But Hoseok needed to see him. He needed to know him. Now Hoseok knows him and he’s fairly sure that those hours with Yoongi will be enough to fuel him. The joy that Yoongi’s memory brings him is something he hasn’t any words for. Meeting Yoongi was like coming home. Maybe the happy memories of knowing him will outweigh how much he misses him.

God, the moment he first saw Yoongi was everything. It was as if his entire life was put into perspective. The stars aligned themselves for their meeting, he has no doubt of that. Someone up there set up their meeting, and Hoseok is just lucky enough that they’re hard work paid off.

The way Yoongi looked was unbelievable. He was so innocent and kind. In their first moments, Hoseok could see him fighting with the manufactured reality he was used to, but the instant that their lips touched, Yoongi could feel all the same things Hoseok did. He understood. Even though he didn’t know how or why, he understood.

Yoongi felt the love and passion. Yoongi understood everything.

He is so beautiful. It’s fair to say he’s the most beautiful man in the universe, because it’s in his nature. The thing that Hoseok is hooked on was how his pale skin shined so sweetly in the dark. He’s out there somewhere right now. Yoongi probably thinks of himself as simple and uninteresting, but that’s the least accurate assessment one could ever make. He is the rarest, most precious man in the entire world, and not just because he’s Hoseok’s soulmate. There is no one else like him.

“Are you going to sit there all day?” Ditchwater shouts at him from the caravan. Hoseok realizes now that he’s looking at his reflection in the pond instead of washing the clothes like he was supposed to. What he wouldn’t give for an image of Yoongi. He wants one of those futuristic metal things to carry Yoongi’s face with him. If he were a better artist he would draw him. He’ll probably steal some parchment from Ditchwater and give it a go anyway. Anything is better than nothing.

“Sorry mistress,” Hoseok sighs airily. “I’ll get right to it.”

He takes a large blouse from the basket that’s probably older than himself and looks at it for a few moments. He’s washed it hundreds of times by now. It’s tedious work, but it keeps him busy at least. He finds a comfortable spot, avoiding mud the best that he can. He busies his hands with the washing and scrubbing, but no matter what he does, his mind will forever be busy of Yoongi’s name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please leave a comment if you're reading! It's really disheartening to write a fic and have no one interact with me. There's no point in writing a fic that no one even reads. 
> 
> Comment prompt for today is for you to tell me what song is stuck in your head right now!!


	4. The Lost Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jin, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Primus rides for nearly a day without rest. It’s almost funny watching the Kingdom melt away into farmland, because the drastic change from rich to poor is so deliberate. His father touts the Kingdom as being the most wonderful place possible, but it’s the most obvious lie there ever was. Only the rich can say they live in a good Kingdom. Anyone could see how the people suffer. The now-dead King didn’t care for them. The royal family cares only for their own wealth and their own bloodline. No laws are made to make an everyman’s life better. Taxes are stacked over and over each other in order to make the King richer. It’s not that the King even had malicious intent, he just didn’t care. He didn’t care where the money came from as long as he could renovate his throne room with gold plating on every surface.

His father cared about living as lavishly as possible and owning as much land as he can. His empire stretches so far that some people don’t know that Stormhold isn’t the entire world. Younger generations will never know that the Kingdom has an end. They won’t know about their borders or how those borders were assimilated to Stormhold through war.

Primus may be kinder than his father and brothers, but he’s just as imperial when it comes to land. He wants to claim the entire planet as his own. He wants everything. He’ll be a benevolent ruler, but he wants all of it. When it’s all his, he can begin to make the changes necessary. He’s worked his whole life on figuring out ways to extend the borders and help his citizens.

With all of his heart, Primus believes he will make a good King. That’s why it’s so vitally important that he restore the amulet. The chain is around his neck and every few minutes or so, he clutches it to make sure it’s still there.

He’s not wholly benevolent, and that’s something only he knows. He wears a mask for those around him so that they don’t know exactly how far he’s willing to go for power. It’s impossible for a King to be selfless, isn’t it? Royal blood comes with a certain degree of superiority. He wonders if his father or his father before him thought they would be good Kings or if all they wanted was the power.

Many generations ago, it wasn’t actually tradition for the brothers to kill each other. Maybe those men made good Kings. Hopefully Primus will be able to put an end to that tradition whenever he actually finds himself a wife. He’s been so distracted with his training that he hasn’t had the time for frivolity.

Primus can feel the exhaustion of his horse beneath him, and he looks to the sky to see that the sun has lowered in the sky and will soon settle on the horizon. He signals his hands out to indicate to his men that they should find a place to rest. After another twenty minutes of riding, one of his men scouts a location at the edge of the woods.

There are six of them in total; Primus and five of his men. Primus is a good ten to twenty years older than all of them. He scouted them all at the beginning of their training, pulling them out of the King’s army into his own service. As such, he trusts all of the men with his life, quite literally. They’ve sworn their allegiance to him, so the consequences of betraying him are steep.

He likes to think he’s kind to them. They have a healthy respect for him, but his men don’t fear him like the ones who claim fealty to Septimus.

Primus settles down by himself, pulling out maps from a bag carried by his horse. There’s a lot of terrain to cover in an attempt to find his lost brother. He has so much he doesn’t know, and not a clue where he’s supposed to start. He knows he has an edge over his brother, but for how long is uncertain. Septimus has ways of finding out whatever information he wants.

After an hour he has to light a candle so that he can even see the parchment in front of him. Primus is so focused on his maps that he doesn’t hear the sound of one of his men approaching.

“Your highness,” he says, holding out a bowl of stew. Primus hadn’t even noticed that they’d made food. How long has he been focusing on these maps?

“Ah, thank you,” he says with a smile, accepting the food. He looks at Primus hesitantly, like he doesn’t know what to do now. “Come, sit,” he says, patting the ground next to him. “It’s no joy eating alone.”

“Um… alright,” he says. He’s a young man, not much more than twenty. Taehyung is his name. He’s soft spoken around Primus but not so around others. Primus understands, but it’s a bit tedious being treated differently just because he’s royalty.

After a moment of pause, Taehyung sits down. Instead of looking at him, he just looks at his thumbs in his lap. Primus smirks to himself as he takes a bite of the stew. It’s not particularly appetizing but it certainly feels hearty. He only realizes now just how hungry he is. He’s also realizing how very tired he is. Nearly a day of constant travel has left him feeling like he’ll pass out if he blinks too long. He’s well versed with riding a horse so he’s not sore – or any sorer than he usually he is – but Taehyung is young and is probably feeling the ache in his joints.

“How are you feeling, young man?” he asks.

Taehyung blanches and shrugs his shoulders. “I’m tired.”

Primus nods. “So am I. I wonder, what do you leave behind in Capital?”

He shrugs yet again, “I have parents and two siblings.”

“I hope your siblings aren’t as murder crazy as mine,” he jokes.

“No, no, of course not.” He realizes how that sounds. “I didn’t mean- I just I mean-”

“Don’t worry. I’m not offended. My family is a mess and I understand that more than anyone. Does your pay go directly to your family?”

“Yes, sire, of course,” Taehyung nods. Being in the King’s army doesn’t pay well, but to serve the Prince himself is a handsome wage. He absently thinks to himself that he should give Taehyung and his other men a bonus once he finally ascends the throne.

Taehyung looks at the ground for a time before he says anything again. “Pardon my asking sire, but I’m wondering if you had planned on killing the Lost Prince?”

Primus doesn’t know what to do with that question. It’s not often people ask him moral questions like that, and he knows that it’s a tricky thing to address. A lot of these men, if not all of them, only joined Primus because of his nonviolence. The prospect of their Prince murdering someone is probably something that they want no part of. They have no choice but to stand by his side, though. If any were to ask, he would free them from his service, but no one has ever asked.

“It is not my wish,” he says. “I hope very much to claim the throne without shedding blood.” That’s a lie, but he does a great job of hiding it. He knows it’s impossible that he’s able to take the throne without killing both of his brothers. It’s something he finds no joy in, but it is inevitable.

Taehyung nods, and looks at Primus for the first time. “Prince Septimus came to me first to recruit me. I turned him down.”

“I understand,” he says with a frown. It seems painful having to lie to a kid this young, but he has no other choice. “I swear to you that I will do everything within my power not to kill my youngest brother. I make no promises that I can spare Septimus.”

Taehyung doesn’t seem nearly as bothered at the prospect of Septimus’ death. He really is the cruelest man alive, and Taehyung is lucky to have only ever had one exchange with him. He grew up afraid of the man. Every child in Capital told stories about the evil Prince Septimus. He killed his own mother for looking at him the wrong way. Taehyung doesn’t know if that’s just gossip or the truth. He killed three of his own brothers, so one can’t know for sure. Of course, that is something of a tradition in the royal family, but hurting your own family is hard for Taehyung to fathom when he’s just a kid growing up near the outer ridge of the city, on a farm that is more affected by the King’s taxes than the rich in the inner most circle.

Taehyung doesn’t dare say what he’s thinking right now, but he has to consider it. If the King’s final wish was to make the Lost Prince the next King, mustn’t there be a reason? What if the Lost Prince really will be the best heir?

It’s hard to deny that Primus is the best option currently available. Of the two people who could be his future King, Taehyung would gladly pick Primus. In all honesty, he likes the man. He’s wary of his influence and status, but he is a kind person. He cares for his men, and practices pacifism. He has never treated Taehyung disrespectfully, which is why he’s never broken his vow and abandoned him, even if he hates being so far away from his family. Taehyung would give anything to go back home rather than be here, wherever “here” is.

Taehyung met the Lost Prince once. He was eight years old at the time. Taehyung’s father took him into the city to contest a bill that would reduce the value of his property. It was his first time being in the true city of Capital, despite technically living there his whole life. While his father was speaking with the council, Taehyung wandered the gardens, and he met a boy the same age as himself. He was funny, silly and full of energy. He immediately saw Taehyung as a friend and asked him if he wanted to play a game. He was just another boy. He wasn’t ordinary, because he was more excitable than any kid that Taehyung knew from his one-room schoolhouse. They played for an hour and little eight-year-old Taehyung had no clue at all who the boy was.

Eventually, two heavily armed guards saw Taehyung and the boy playing and immediately tore Taehyung away from him. He had cried and kicked, but the guards just pushed him away. He ran crying to find his father, pleading with him to let Taehyung see his friend again. It wasn’t until his father hugged him and told him how much trouble he could’ve gotten into with the guards that Taehyung finally learned that boy had been the Prince. He wasn’t the Lost Prince quite yet. But five years later, he would be.

It’s hard for Taehyung to remove that boy from his memory. How few people can say they’ve met him? Even his name has been lost.

“How do you even plan on finding the Lost Prince?” Taehyung asks eventually. Primus sets his empty bowl down, as he looks at him with a smile.

“I need the guidance of a Soothsayer,” he says. “Septimus will be in search of one too, and I don’t want to meet him on this quest, so I plan on finding someone in a smaller town.” Taehyung nods, because that much is obvious. “But I know something that neither Septimus nor anyone else knows.”

“May I ask what?”

He gives Taehyung a wink. “Maybe in time.”

The memory that came to Primus before he ran away with the amulet is the key to the puzzle. Primus doesn’t know how he was able to keep that memory, yet he can’t remember his brother’s name.

His father always called his youngest brother his star because of a star shaped birthmark on his shoulder. He rarely called the brother by his name, because he was always “my star.” Ergo, the star that Primus looks for is not a literal star from the heavens. It is his brother himself. The King probably thought he was playing a clever trick, but Primus can see straight through him.

If the Lost Prince is himself the star, no other man will be able to take the throne besides him. Which is why Primus must restore the ruby and immediately kill his brother. Only the person in possession of the royal ruby is the true King, and Primus has worked all his life to be the one. He’s not going to let his youngest brother get away with taking it from him in the last moment, even if it does mean he has to commit fratricide.

★★★★★★

“You’re not actually packing a literal bag, are you, Yoongi?”

Yoongi nods his head. “Of course I’m packing an actual bag. I’m finding Hoseok. No matter what I do, I am finding him.”

“And you think that what?” Seokjin picks up a Ziplock bag full of deodorant, sunscreen, and toothpaste. “It’s like overnight camp or something?”

“Hoseok told that his world is huge like ours. It’s a whole Kingdom over there. This feels like packing lightly to me!” Yoongi says. He throws an unopened box of granola bars into his backpack and then tests the zipper to see if it closes.

“Oh whatever,” Seokjin rolls his eyes. He’s willing to entertain Yoongi only so far as seeing the other side of the wall will prove to him that there’s nothing there. Yoongi just needs to see for his own eyes that there’s nothing there. Seokjin isn’t going to try talking him out of this until they’ve seen the empty open field that lies beyond the wall.

“Didn’t you pick up a candle at the festival?” Yoongi asks when he decides there’s a little more space. He’s already stuffed a change of clothes, a blanket, basic toiletries, and snacks in there. He wonders how accessible water and food will be. It is a whole Kingdom with people, though, so surely, they have things like that. He doesn’t know what type of money they use, but they seemed to accept Seokjin’s money just fine at the festival. Mostly what Yoongi is worried about is a lack of running water.

“What do you need a candle for?” Seokjin asks.

“Well, they don’t have electric outlets there, do they? It’s not like I can use my phone as a flashlight when things get dark.”

“I’m not staying out there after dark,” Seokjin says to himself. He’s not packing anything, because they’re not going anywhere. Come nightfall, he and Yoongi will be back here in their apartment with Yoongi looking embarrassed and defeated. Seokjin will do his best not to say “I told you so.” Once they’re old and can look back and reflect on things, he can make fun of Yoongi for how strange he’s been behaving.

“Just give me the candle,” Yoongi says.

“This is so ridiculous,” Seokjin says when he grabs the candle from where he left it on the kitchen counter.

“I think I’m just about set,” Yoongi says. “If you don’t want to pack then don’t pack, but don’t come crying to me when you need something.”

“We’re coming home tonight.”

“Well, maybe _you_ are. But I’m not coming home until I meet Hoseok again. He said that he can only cross the wall at Midsummer, so if I meet him, I don’t know when or how often I’ll even come back.” Yoongi knows he’ll come back eventually, but he has no actual prediction of how long he’ll be in Stormhold. However long it takes to find Hoseok. That’s his only stipulation. He has to find Hoseok. Even if it takes years.

Seokjin knows for a fact that Yoongi will come home with him tonight. Yoongi is lazy and he’s not an outdoors person. He’ll give up after about an hour or two. Seokjin just hopes that they don’t have to go too far into the wilderness before Yoongi accepts reality.

“Just please grab your jacket, okay? I don’t know what it’s like over there, and I don’t want you to freeze to death because of your skepticism.”

Seokjin rolls his eyes but goes into his room to grab a sweatshirt anyway. This is the most he is willing to do to appease him. The summer sun is out and blazing so he ties his sweatshirt around his waist and crosses his arms as Yoongi packs a few more things in his backpack.

“Are you all set now?” Seokjin asks. Yoongi isn’t a hiking person and this is the closest he’ll ever come to actually hiking. Yoongi is looking at a little plastic compass in his hand to determine if it works. It looks like a children’s toy, like it came out of a Christmas cracker. Yoongi is so ridiculous, he sighs.

Yoongi goes through his mental checklist a few times. He has a bag; he’s called in sick to work for the next week. He obviously called his mom too. He didn’t tell her where he was going, because she’d only worry herself into illness, but she knows he’ll be away for a while.

Yoongi is scared about what might happen once he’s in Stormhold. Hoseok had told him it’s a dangerous place. He doesn’t know just what kind of danger he was referring to. It could be dangerous creatures, or it could be the people themselves. If it’s a society where a kidnapped Hoseok is made a servant than he supposes there really is a darkness to it. However, Yoongi has trouble believing that a fairy tale land can possibly be bad. There’s corruption and murder in every country throughout all of time, so Yoongi thinks he’ll be able to handle Stormhold. Besides, Hoseok is worth it.

Hoseok didn’t want him to cross the wall, but Yoongi isn’t very good at doing what he’s told. He is going to do it. He is going to find Hoseok and save him, no matter the cost. Yoongi hasn’t thought of what he’ll have to do when he meets Ditchwater Sal. That’s a matter that he’ll face when it happens, because he gets sick to his stomach at the prospect that he’ll have to hurt someone. Hoseok said he can only be freed by Ditchwater’s own will or in her death. Yoongi will do everything possible to make sure it’s the former.

“Seokjin,” Yoongi says, looking him in the eyes with seriousness that is rare between the two of them. They’ve known each other for most of their lives and it’s always been easy. Their friendship is like water; it simply flows. But this is the biggest test it’s ever faced. Seokjin doesn’t believe anything will happen when they cross the wall. He believes with all of his heart that they will find a field and that’s it. Yoongi doesn’t know how he can possibly communicate to Seokjin that that’s not at all what’s there until he sees it for himself.

There is however a painful feeling in his stomach that’s worried Seokjin’s right. He’s trying to keep that within, because he doesn’t want to accept it. It’s just not possible for what Hoseok showed him to be fake. It was all so real and so magical. He _was_ in his right mind for every second of Hoseok. He knows what he knows. But that doesn’t completely quench the fear he has that there’s nothing over the wall. He needs for it to be real. More than anything, he needs for it to be real.

“Yes?” Seokjin asks when Yoongi still hasn’t said anything.

Yoongi looks at him. “Please keep an open mind, okay? I know this is all crazy to you. But you just have to understand how important this is to me. Hoseok is everything to me.” Yoongi smiles and pats his pocket where he has a printed-out copy of his picture of Hoseok.

Seokjin shrugs. “I’ll entertain you for as long as it takes before you see sense.” Yoongi purses his lips. Not quite the vote of confidence he’s looking for, but he’ll take it.

With that, Yoongi looks around their apartment and heads to the front door. He wonders when he’ll see it again. He has a feeling that this adventure won’t be a swift one. There’s an entire Kingdom beyond that wall and Hoseok could be anywhere in it. Yoongi looks back at his apartment somberly. He makes his goodbye to it before he turns the lights off and then closes the door.

The two of them are walking down the street a minute later. Yoongi’s backpack is heavier than he expected, but he’ll manage. He hopes it’ll be fine on his back, but hopefully Seokjin will trade off with him every now and again. He wonders if Seokjin will actually stay with him once he learns how real Stormhold is. Yoongi won’t be surprised if he turns back and tries to pretend he never saw anything.

No one looks at them funnily as they walk. Yoongi still looks young enough that people don’t question why he carries a backpack around. They pass by shops that Yoongi knows perfectly well. There’s a small boutique he’s never been inside of and a barber he’s been seeing since he was a child. There’s an insurance office, the print shop, and a Starbucks.

What types of stores does Stormhold have? Candle makers? Taverns? Money lenders? Yoongi isn’t very knowledgeable about the eighteenth century if he’s being honest. He used to know more, but that was when he was a kid and before he replaced all that knowledge with boring college classes.

The street ends and turns immediately into the big grassy field. Yoongi is thankful that the area hasn’t ever been developed. Wall is too proud of their wall to ever hide it. The field isn’t small, though, and it’s up on somewhat of a hill. Seokjin doesn’t say much to him as they transition from pavement to grass.

After ten minutes of walking, the figure of the guard starts to become legible. His features aren’t well defined until they’re a few feet from him, but he doesn’t even seem to notice them. It’s the same man that Yoongi saw the day before, and he looks just as stoic and unbothered as he always does.

The gap in the wall isn’t anything glamorous. It’s a few dislodged stones about three feet wide that make it easy to hop right over. The wall itself isn’t terribly large or sturdy, and it’s rather peculiar why only this little gap is guarded. Or at least, it’s peculiar to other people, but Yoongi knows differently.

“H-hi sir,” Yoongi says and gives him a polite bow with his head. He hadn’t actually factored in the guard until just now. This guy is here every single second of every single day. No one is allowed to cross the wall for any reason whatsoever. So how exactly do Yoongi and Seokjin pass?

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes flicker over to the two of them and then his posture changes. Obviously, he suspects why they’re here.

“Okay, so, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we need to cross the wall.”

“No,” he says curtly.

“I… see, I know your job is to guard it, but this is incredibly important. This is life or death important that you let us cross.”

“The answer is unequivocally no. I make no exceptions.”

“But-”

“If I let you cross this wall, someone else will want to. And then someone and else and then another. I cannot let a single sole cross.”

“Why though?” Yoongi asks. He can see that Seokjin is annoyed because he crosses his arms and looks up at the sky. Is he more annoyed with Yoongi or the guard?

“It’s my job.”

“I know that. We already discussed this, sir, I just want to know why. Haven’t you ever crossed over yourself? Just to see what’s there? Because you have to have wondered. You have to have your own theories.”

“This wall has always been guarded and it will always be.”

Yoongi sighs. He scratches his head and considers how to form his next words. “We spoke yesterday. I asked you these same questions and you said nothing. But here’s the thing: there’s an entire world over there and I need to see it. I need to know it. I have a strange feeling like it’s calling to me. I met someone from behind that wall. I met someone who I love with all of my heart, and now I have to go find them. I need you to just let me by this one time. Just once. It’s more important than you know.”

“Boy,” the guard says. “There is no sob story I will accept. I will not let you cross this wall. That’s the end of it.”

Yoongi sighs. He really did try to reason with the man. He’s going to feel like an asshole for this. “Alright.” Yoongi looks at Seokjin as if he’s trying to give him a silent message. Yoongi turns back to the guard and pretends like he’s going to walk away. Then he does something that his mother will kill him for. Yoongi pushes the guard over with all of his might. Not to hurt him, but to incapacitate him for a moment as he turns and leaps over the wall without hesitation.

“Come on!” he shouts to Seokjin who’s in shock at what Yoongi just did. Yoongi isn’t violent in the slightest. When Yoongi would be thrown into lockers in high school, he just accepted it. He never fought back. Pushing an old man is the most un-Yoongi-like thing in the entire world, and Seokjin is almost so dumbfounded that he stands there for a second in surprise. Yoongi is running though. In the time it takes for Seokjin to understand what’s happened, Yoongi has already sprinted several meters on the other side of the wall.

Seokjin assess the old man on the ground for a second to make sure Yoongi didn’t do any real damage. He looks shocked and angry, but he’s not going to be in any poor shape because of this. Then Seokjin follows. He hops through the gap in the wall and runs to catch up with Yoongi. His legs are longer so he’s on him in a flash. Yoongi doesn’t turn to look back, but Seokjin does and he sees that the guard isn’t giving chase. He’s standing up again and he looks like he could strangle the two of them with his bare hands, but that’s the worst of it. It’s a good thing he’s old and frail, because if he wasn’t, Seokjin and Yoongi would be in big trouble.

The opposite side of the wall is exactly what it looks like. It’s a big old field of grass and then a thin cover of trees. They don’t stop running until they enter under the trees, after five minutes – which is four minutes too long for Seokjin’s out of shape ass.

Seokjin stops to catch his breath, leaning up against an enormous old tree. Yoongi sees him stop and checks behind his shoulder to make sure that they’re alone. He supposes it’s okay to take a rest after the running, so he stops by a tree near to Seokjin.

“I can’t believe you just did that, Yoongi!” Seokjin looks annoyed but not quite angry with him. “You assaulted that guy!”

“He wasn’t letting us pass.”

“So you pushed him?”

“I mean, yeah,” Yoongi shrugs. He knows it was wrong, but he did what he had to do. Hoseok is worth any and everything. He regrets pushing the guard, but he would do it again if he had to.

“What has gotten into you?” Seokjin says, shaking his head.

“Well, what would you have done?” Yoongi asks. He knows that Seokjin doesn’t have an answer, because Seokjin wouldn’t have crossed the wall in the first place. The guard was always able to catch kids from jumping the wall, but he’s no match against two healthy twenty-somethings.

“If he punches you when we come back, I’m not stopping him.”

“Fair enough,” Yoongi nods. He wipes sweat off of his forehead and then looks around him. There’s nothing abnormal so far. They are just in a small little patch of woods. The trees above them are incredibly old, with big trunks and longer canopies which as good as block out the sun overhead. But the trees aren’t extensive because Yoongi can see the sun up ahead of them. It’s almost like a little island.

Seokjin shakes his head some more and then pulls up his sleeve to look at his watch. Curiously, the screen is blank, and he curses himself because this is why Yoongi doesn’t wear a digital watch. Seokjin is just lazy when it comes to most things and trying to read an analog watch is like 2% more brain capacity than he would really care for.

Instead, he pulls out his phone to check the time, but the screen is black when he taps on it and even when he presses the power button. He wrinkles his eyebrows together and holds down on the power button for a long moment. Ordinarily, it would show off the white logo in the center, but even after thirty seconds it doesn’t. Seokjin was literally just charging his phone before they left. It had to have been almost completely charged. Did he hit it against something? He groans with annoyance because phones are fucking expensive and he’s missing a day of work for this fucking hike.

“What’s wrong?” Yoongi asks.

“My phone is broken,” Seokjin says.

“It probably just isn’t going to work because we’re in Stormhold now. They don’t have any of that technology here.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes and pulls out his own phone to show Seokjin. Just like Seokjin’s his phone refuses to turn on. Now, that is definitely strange, but Seokjin chalks it up to some weird electricity spike that they might have passed through. Maybe that’s why the wall is guarded. It’s because there’s a weird power draining thing somewhere around here. Holy, shit maybe it’s a secret government facility like Area 51.

“Ready?” Yoongi asks, when he’s decided that Seokjin has caught his breath. He’s still annoyed by his phone’s malfunction, but he supposes it’ll be fine. It’s not like they’re going to get much cell reception out here anyway.

“Fine. But I’m not doing any more running.”

“I hadn’t planned on it either,” Yoongi says. Seokjin’s expression still has an edge to it but he lets Yoongi guide him through the trees until they come out on the other side. Yoongi is not orientationally challenged but when they leave the trees, he has to look around a few times to make sure this is the other side. It looks exactly the same. But there isn’t a wall and no angry guard anywhere in front of them. So this is definitely the other side, but it’s just grass.

“How far do we have to go before you give up on this thing?”

Yoongi shakes his head. “Sorry, Jin, but that’s not going to happen.”

Seokjin rolls his eyes. Still, he knows Yoongi well enough to know he’s going to give up sooner rather than later. The worst that happens – and he thinks it’s unlikely – is that he decides to camp overnight. The two of them have gone camping three times before and Yoongi hated it all three times. Yoongi isn’t built for the outdoors, at least not during the daytime. It’s not the sleeping in a tent that bothers him so much as the peeing in the woods. Yoongi doesn’t like that.

Yoongi only ever agreed to go camping so that they could leave the city and sleep under the stars. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t even have the tent. He would just fall asleep with the stars watching over him. Yoongi is willing to go on record to say that the single worst thing about industrialization, even more than capitalism, is that you can’t see the stars anymore. If you live in a big city, the sky at night is black. If you live in a small town like Wall, you can only see some of the stars. Yoongi’s biggest dream in life is to go so far off into the nowhere that he can see the milky way.

Seokjin remembers when they were young, and they would sneak out in the middle of the night to go walk around the playground next to their houses. Yoongi had begged his parents for a book about constellations for his birthday, and when he finally got it, he dragged Seokjin out on school nights to point them out. Yoongi was a weird kid, but Seokjin always thought that was the fun of it. He tried to understand Yoongi’s fascination with knowing the names of the stars, but Seokjin always found them too complex. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on earth. If it were up to Yoongi, he would be able to memorize every last one of them. Except the sun, he hates the sun.

“Ugh, fuck no,” Seokjin mumbles to himself when he sees a hill in the distance. It’s not too far ahead of them, but it’s steep and tall. It’s going to hurt his thighs like a motherfucker. “Could we not?”

“I’m going to go forward,” Yoongi says. “You make the decision whether you will or not.” He has to remind Seokjin that he doesn’t have to come with. Yoongi would like for him to, because he wants to be able to prove to Seokjin the truth of this world, but he has no control over what Seokjin does. 

“Your mom will kill me, resurrect me and then kill me again if I let anything happen to you,” Seokjin grumbles to himself. It’s true. It should be noted, Yoongi’s father also loves him infinitely, but his mother would destroy entire nations for her son. Sure, Yoongi was adopted, but that just means his parents wanted him more than it’s possible to want something. He has been shown proof of that every single day.

He thinks of what his mother would say right now as he climbs the hill. She’s the only person who wouldn’t think he’s crazy. She would’ve packed him a picnic basket and made him bring five changes of clothes. It’s better that she doesn’t know where he is. It had been so hard to come up with an excuse to tell her when he called her. He and Seokjin are camping. Yes, even though he hated camping the other times they’ve done it. He’s going to finally go see the stars. He wonders if she believed him. She won’t stop worrying until he hugs her again, and he knows that.

Yoongi wonders if he’s a good son. He’s always been kind and always loved his parents. He’s never done anything that extraordinary to make his parents proud, but at his heart, he’s always been good. Sometimes he would get into arguments with them when he was a teenager telling them that he wishes he was with his “real family.” He was an angsty teen, but you would be too if you were abandoned by the side of the road when you were a baby.

It just makes him feel sleazy when he thinks of what he’s doing now. What kind of son is he if he treks across a dangerous foreign land and doesn’t talk to his parents for weeks, months, years? He hopes it won’t come to that, but for Hoseok, he’ll do almost anything. He won’t give up. But he also won’t ever stop thinking about his mom and dad through every second.

It’s at the top of the hill when Yoongi’s and Seokjin’s lives change irrevocably. On the side of the hill they just climbed, all that lies ahead of you is the slope and the sky. Once you reach the top, that’s when you see something no one from Wall or anywhere else on earth ever gets to see.

It’s a town. If Yoongi lived in a Grimm’s fairy tale, it wouldn’t be anything exciting at all. It’s just a town that you might find in a historical drama. But that’s the big thing, isn’t it? It’s a town _from a historical drama_.

It’s a rural town. It can’t be much bigger than a few blocks in length and width. Closest to them is a stable that is full of horses, they can tell by the smell. Yoongi sees the tell-tale sharp point of a church behind buildings with hanging hill roofs. Everything is made of the finest wood or the reddest brick. These are centuries old buildings that look brand new. Without question, the year is 1750-something.

Before them is a world unlike any Yoongi’s ever imagined before. Yoongi knows skyscrapers, apartment complexes, McDonalds. Wall is a dinky little town. The newest buildings before the McDonalds were probably constructed around 1920. Even the Starbucks resides inside of a building older than Yoongi’s great grandparents. But this is putting traditional to a completely new level. Yoongi knows immediately it’s because they’re in Stormhold and it lights up his face.

He feels a tear come to his eye. It’s real. He’s in Stormhold. This is all happening. He feels vindication, because he’s not crazy. Everything that Hoseok said and showed him was the truth. These people might be the same ones that host the Midsummer festival! They’re real people who are really from Stormhold. They may not know what’s behind the Wall, just as the people from Wall have no idea that they’re here.

He turns to see Seokjin’s slack jaw and wonders what’s running through his mind right now. They’re not on the street quite yet, and they haven’t talked to the people, but surely something is being negotiated in his head. How far into this town, how far into this Kingdom will Seokjin have to go before he truly understands? He’s probably coming around to it right now.

“Holy shit,” Seokjin says, after standing face to face with the town for a few long moments. This isn’t possible. What he’s looking at can’t be real. It just can’t be. But here it is. Is it possible for these people to just be one of those “uncontacted societies” that lives outside of the modern world? Someone would have noticed them by now, though, right? They would have a Wikipedia page. They would have been killed off. Wall is only an hour away from the city, so someone would have to have found this town by now. What the fuck is going on?

“Jin, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Seokjin’s face is wide-eyed with amazement. “ _You think?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment prompt for today is for you to tell me what your favorite hair color is on any of the boys (I'm sorry I repeat comment prompts for my fics, they're just hard to think of). I like white hair Yoongi :)


	5. Runes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jungkook!

Lamia has two sisters. They’re the same two sisters she’s had all of her life, and that life has been very long indeed. In a perfect world, she wouldn’t have to share her castle with anyone, especially not the two hags. Hag is both an assessment of their magic and of their appearance.

The castle around her is decaying almost as grotesquely as Lamia and her sisters. The castle is a bit younger than her, about five or six hundred years old. She remembers when it was built, back when she was young and beautiful. Those were the days. Now her boobs sag and she’s bitter about it. She has wrinkles where she didn’t know you could have wrinkles and her once beautiful blonde hair is now a dull white. Still, she is less ugly than her two sisters.

Lamia still longs for her glory days. Back then, she was the most feared and most admired witch in all the Kingdom. _Witch Queen_ they called her. _Her dark majesty_. She was a wonderful ruler, all of her citizens feared her, and they had every right to. She was seductress and murderess. Half of Stormhold once belonged to her and her sisters, but that changed when the King’s forces invaded. They staked claim on all the land and left the Lillim Coven in tatters. The three of them were lucky to escape with their lives, but their eternal youth was challenged in the process.

Now she’s a withering old crone and people have forgotten their fear of her. Her sisters are content to live out their days with bitterness and inaction, but Lamia will do anything and everything to regain her youth and her Kingdom. She’s not young and spry enough to take the Kingdom back right now, but soon there will come a time when the Witch Queen rises again. It’s been 200 years, but she will wait 200 more if she has to.

For now, Lamia has to wake every day to shared walls with Mormo and Empusa and pretend like she’s okay with spending an eternity with them. Well, if they even have an eternity. She’s always been the beautiful one. Even though her current appearance could curdle the blood of a young healthy man, she’s still more beautiful than either of her sisters. Then again, so is a turnip. Her sisters have teeth black as charcoal, and maggots living in their stringy hair. Their wrinkles have wrinkles, their skin is blotchy, and their stature is hunched over.

Most of the time, Lamia stays in her room and tries to pretend that this castle and Kingdom are hers alone. She plots out all the different ways she can start a coup, all of them require a lot of murder and torture, but that’s nothing new. Back in her heyday she was really good at it. She didn’t even need to lift a finger. She’ll return to it someday. The magic and the royalty.

Someday soon, she’ll be able to comb out her long, beautiful blonde hair again. She’ll wear beautiful dresses and sit on the extravagant throne. People in Capital will whisper their fear and adoration of her in the streets and in their homes. All will be right.

No one deserves the power as much as she does. That stupid magicless family who thinks they own the throne are mere bugs for her to squash. Once she has her magic and her youth back, it’s all over for them. Her revenge will be bloody and merciless, and most nights the fantasies of screams and tears calm her into sleep.

“Sisters!” Empusa shrieks from the front hall of the castle. Annoyed, Lamia hears her voice pierce into the corner of the castle she calls her own. Most of her days are spent looking in the mirror and trying to figure out what went wrong and that’s precisely where Empusa’s voice finds her. Lamia stands up angrily and makes her way towards the shrill sound in order to tell her to shut up.

This castle was once beautiful. Carpets of rich red with beautiful paintings adorning the walls. Lamia’s portrait was once the shining art piece of the castle. But the castle was looted when their royalty was stripped. The once beautiful portrait she had commissioned falls from the wall in ragged strips in the front room, but she refuses to remove it. The painting reminds her of what she lacks.

It’s not just her looks that have withered. It’s her magic as well. Every time she uses magic, something else ages. She’ll get old age spots, her hair will fall out, or her spine bends downward. She wants to cling to what beauty she has left, even though it makes her miserable to see herself in the mirror every day.

When she was young, magic was easy as breath and caused no strain. Now, whenever she uses magic, it takes such a huge toll. She’s not really willing to risk it anymore, for fear that the magic will be too much and she’ll drop dead like a fruit fly – which, by the way, live in Empusa’s mouth. People aren’t meant to live this long and that’s why they all look the way they do. But it’s not over for Lamia yet.

Empusa is standing in the middle of the front room, though to be fair, most of the castle is just one room now. Walls still lie as pieces of rubble in sporadic hills all over the floor. Lamia takes the path of least resistance until she’s staring with anger at her younger sister.

“What do you want?” Lamia says. Mormo stands beside her a moment later with the same look of disapproval.

“Have you not been listening? Have you not heard?” Empusa says. Her voice is nasally and unpleasant to hear up close. Or from far away.

“Hear what?” Lamia asks.

Empusa cackles a witchy laugh that causes Lamia to smack her over her head. Her voice is exactly what one would expect a witch to sound like when she says, “The King is dead, sisters.”

“He’s dead?” they ask in unison.

“Indeed,” she says. Empusa always has an extra ear assigned to the Capital. The castle is a few hundred miles away, so it ages her to eavesdrop, but she loves to spy on the royal family too much to give up the habit. It’s as if she’s waiting for the Lillim Coven to find the moment to strike and steal the throne, but they all know that none of them are capable of it in their sorry states.

Lamia’s initial interest fades away quickly. She’s lived through the deaths of dozens of Kings. This one is no different. “What does it matter?” She’s a bit of a pessimist. One King dying doesn’t affect her life in anyway other than satisfy her than the brief high of she feels at the death of someone she hates. So many hundreds of deaths of her enemies later and the satisfaction she feels now is dull and barely accessible. 

Empusa laughs again, “Oh, my dear sisters, the King made a funny little plan to determine who takes the throne now that he’s dead. Instead of a battle as per tradition, they must restore the light of the royal ruby.”

“The royal ruby?” Mormo asks. Her voice is deeper than Empusa’s yet still horrible to listen to. The ruby was stolen from them two centuries ago when they were overthrown from power. That ruby was stolen off another King, who stole it from another. Traditionally, the person in possession of the royal ruby is the rightful King of Stormhold, but it loses its luster every two to three hundred years, making it a no more exciting than a piece of glass. It’s unknown precisely how old that gem really is, but it runs deep. “But you need a star to restore that stone?”

“No star has fallen in over three hundred years,” Lamia states the obvious. They wouldn’t all look like this if there was a star out there. They have a very small piece remaining of the last star, which they’ve been saving for the day they need it.

“The King seems to think that there is a star out there,” Empusa says. Her sister’s eyes bulge so wide that they might fall out of their head. It’s a very real worry, because they are getting to that age where body parts might decay and fall off. 

“A star? Here?”

“Yes, a star.”

“How is it possible that we didn’t already know about it?”

Lamia shakes her head, “the King must be mistaken.”

“No,” Empusa says. “The star is real. It must be out there somewhere. Even if it isn’t we have no choice but to look for it.” Lamia looks at her sisters than down at herself. She’s not wrong. Even if the King was just playing a trick on his sons, they have no choice but to believe a star is out there.

“Where do we find it?”

“The King said that the youngest son has it,” Empusa replies.

“The youngest son _has_ it?”

“That’s what he said,” Empusa replies, cackling disgustingly. “People have forgotten just what stars really are it seems.”

“Did the King say where to find the star?” Lamia asks, a scary edge to her voice. Even her sisters are a bit afraid of her power. They’ve always been second best to her. _She_ was the Witch Queen. They were merely the Witch Queen’s evil sisters.

“No,” she says, evil smile still on her face. “But the brothers don’t know either. They search for the star now. I don’t think they even know what they’re looking for.”

Lamia looks to Mormo who looks to Empusa. Mormo finally brings a smile onto her lips to match the ugly smiles on the other two. “Sisters, you know what this means.”

Lamia straightens her back which is easier said than done. She looks at the two of them, a few inches taller.

“A star we don’t know about. What a twisted game.”

“In the royal family, no less,” Lamia feels herself fuming. They watch the sky nightly to monitor for falling stars. A star is the only thing that can turn back the clock on their aging. But they are so rare that most people have forgotten the old magic. Only the Lillim Coven – of which only Lamia and her sisters still survive – know precisely what stars do.

“The Lost Prince,” Mormo reminds them. “The Lost Prince is what we seek.” News from the Capital is slow in reaching them, but eventually, they learn all there is to know. Whether it’s because of Empusa’s extra ear or the unlucky travelers who venture too close to the Lillim castle and are tortured for entertainment. 

Lamia nods her head and then her eyes flash evilly with the facts of what has to be done. Hurriedly, she and her sisters run to the cabinet where they keep what’s left of their old days. In an intricate, once beautiful deco box now covered in a centimeters thick coating of dust is the tiny fragment of the last star fallen to earth. Lamia is too old to remember just how long ago this star fell. They ate it too greedily because now only a sliver remains, not enough to bring back beauty and magic for more than a few weeks or maybe only days.

Empusa is right behind Lamia and rips the box out of her hands which is ripped out of _her_ hands by Mormo and ripped back into Lamia’s hands. They could do this all day, but Lamia hisses and her two sisters narrow their eyes at her.

“We must first consult the runes to determine which of us may go,” Lamia says, which is as democratic as she’s willing to be. She’s going to be the one to find the star no matter what happens and there’s little doubt of that fact. However, she doesn’t want to entirely burn the old bridge connecting her to her sisters just yet, so she’ll pretend that they have an equal chance at being chosen.

The two of them nod, probably suspecting her treachery, but they’re not willing to give up their chance to leave this god forsaken castle, no matter how slim the odds. Lamia places the box delicately on the cabinet and reaches inside it once again to pull out an old set of runes. Like everything else, they’re scuffed and decayed, but they’ll do the trick. Runes aren’t terribly difficult to make, but that would require more magic than she has.

The reading of runes is the easiest magic there is, and barely sucks up any power. There are even some non-magic humans capable of reading runes, though they dwindle in number with every passing age. Only the oldest families still retain that skill and there is no family older than her own.

Lamia holds the runes in her hand, feeling as though they could give her warmth. They are nothing more than cold stones. They don’t bring her joy like they used to.

“Empusa,” she says before dropping the runes on top of the cabinet. They all face down. Lamia smiles, and Empusa curses loudly, which is made all the worse by her unpleasant voice. Lamia hadn’t even bothered disrupting the results of Empusa’s test, because there’s no way fate would choose her over either of her sisters. In the recesses of her bones, Lamia senses that must mess with Mormo’s outcome. She picks the stones up, holding them in her hand. She whispers a spell softly to them, feeling a rib crack inside of her at the use of magic, and then she says Mormo’s name out loud. Again, the stones are all face down.

With a sneer, Lamia looks at her sisters. “It seems as though fate has decided I am to look for the star.”

“Not just yet,” Mormo says, snatching the runes from the table. Lamia doesn’t have a chance to cast a spell on them before Mormo says “Lamia” and drops them just the way her sister had. Lamia’s heart spikes painfully in her chest from the fear that the runes will side against her, but that fear is ill warranted because all four stones are face up once they hit the table. Lamia feels magic surging inside of her, ecstatic. Maybe she hadn’t needed to interfere with Mormo’s results after all.

“It is decided,” she says, picking up the box from the cabinet. She doesn’t even hesitate before she opens it and brings the small piece of star to her mouth before there can be any protest. Her sisters look frustratedly at her. The star doesn’t taste particularly nice, but it is hundreds of years old, so that’s to be expected.

Almost instantly, Lamia feels changes inside of her. She feels a warmth spread through her cold, withered body. Her rib heals itself and a few inches are added back into her posture. The featheriness of long hair hits the back of her neck. Even her boobs feel a little perkier. Lamia looks at her hands and watches as the skin clears and tightens before her very eyes. It’s a feeling that she can’t describe. It’s the happiest she thinks she’s felt in a few centuries and she deserves to feel it like no one else, especially more than her sisters. The transformation is quick and she takes a deep breath, feeling as if the air fills her lungs easier than before and leaves her young body feeling rejuvenated. The best part of it is that she feels electricity all over her body, buzzing with magic. She hasn’t felt this much magic course through her in so long that she forgot just how wonderful a feeling it is. The power feels like it might waft off of her, a golden smoke billowing from her fingers of all the potential.

For the first time in over a century, Lamia smiles. Truly, deeply smiles. Not the vague happiness when she watches someone die or hears children weep. This is a real, raw glee. She runs to the closest mirror, which is right beside the old portrait of herself. She used to look into this mirror in awe of her beauty. It’s covered in too much dust and a few cobwebs, so she has to wipe it away with a snap of her fingers.

“Careful sister,” Mormo warns, “that sliver of star is not enough for you to be so reckless with your magic.”

Lamia doesn’t care. She admires her reflection with hunger and lust. She is beautiful once again. Her hair is in blonde waves. Her cheeks are pink, and her lips soft. Her body is lithe and attractive the way it was when she could seduce any and everyone into her bed without effort.

“You’re wasting precious time sister,” Empusa says, though it’s not as if looking at her reflection for a few minutes really is going to put a dent on tracking the star. Whomever else hunts for that star, whether it’s the Princes or a lowly witch, they will not be able to outmatch the Witch Queen.

Lamia purses her lips. “Very well. Fetch me a Babylon candle, won’t you dear sisters.”

Mormo rolls her eyes, “you used the last one two centuries ago.”

“Did I?” Lamia asks. She’s too infatuated with herself to really pay any mind. Her hands run down her body, feeling how beautiful everything is.

“You’ll have to begin on foot,” Empusa says. Certainly, Lamia might have to _begin_ that way, but she’ll steal a horse, or turn someone into one when she gets the chance. She wonders if one of her sisters would mind too terribly being turned into a horse. Surely, they’ve got enough magic left within them to transform right back and they will be very disgruntled with her. That time that Mormo turned Empusa into a rabbit still hasn’t been forgiven, 400 years after she did it. They’d make ugly, lazy horses anyway.

Lamia smirks with an evil sort of laugh, before she walks back to pick up the runes left on the table. She even feels like her walk is sexy now. Most people have probably forgotten what she looks like since most people weren’t born yet when she was overthrown. The thought of not being revered and feared is something that she’s worried about facing, but she’s sure she’ll be able to reclaim that power soon enough. All she needs to do is find that star.

With the runes in her hand, she gives a nod to her sisters and asks the stones which direction she needs to go. She _will_ find the star. She will find it, kill it, and eat its heart.

★★★★★★

Yoongi and Seokjin look around the tavern incredulously. They’re in an actual tavern. An actual 1750s tavern. They’re surrounded by people who live in this world who all believe this to be the real world. This is normal for them. They live with a King and with magic. They have no idea just how unbelievable this is to the two oddly dressed men who enter the building.

Yoongi’s mouth is agape. This is everything he dreamed it would be, but it’s still hard to believe that this is happening. These are real wooden floors and there’s a real wooden bar with real Stormhold residents sitting on stools against it with pints full of Stormhold alcohol. Everyone’s in old fashioned clothes and then here’s these two dickheads in jeans and Nikes. Yoongi is actually embarrassed of himself, because he’s wearing a goddamn Fila hoodie.

“I’m tripping,” Seokjin says. “I’m on acid. Do you remember that time that someone offered us acid at a bar in the city and we said no? I think we’re on that acid right now. It’s two years ago, we’re at a gay club, and we’re both on acid.” Yoongi pinches him. “Ow!” Seokjin says a little too loudly. “What was that for?”

“Well, if you felt it that means that it’s not drugs.”

“I don’t think LSD makes you immune to pain,” Seokjin says.

“We’re not high,” Yoongi says and then walks over to two barstools. Seokjin doesn’t know why they’re stopping here, but he follows. They don’t have Stormholdien money, so he doesn’t know how they’re going to pay for beer or whatever else is on offer. The people at the Midsummer festival accept their money so maybe that will mean they will here too? At least they speak the same language, Seokjin determines when he’s able to read the menu written on the wall. The menu is not very luxurious. It’s food and beer. It doesn’t even say what kind of food.

“Hi, sir,” Yoongi says when he takes a seat and the barkeep, a portly man in his latter 40s, assesses them. The man is clearly trying to negotiate their strange form of dress in his head very quickly. Yoongi tries not to worry. He doesn’t know how he’ll explain their outfits to anyone who asks. They can’t tell people they’re from the other side of the wall, can they? Hoseok said that this place is dangerous to outsiders. They should probably go find clothes as soon as possible though. Yoongi didn’t see a clothing store, but he’s not above stealing clothes from a clothesline. He’s full of deviance today, apparently.

Yoongi had considered this before he left Wall, but at the bottom of his stomach, he thought that they wouldn’t find anything here. He’s relieved but surprised that they are in a Stormhold tavern right now instead of in a big field of grass like Seokjin thought. He’s done his best to believe, but he’s also not an idiot and he knew this was unlikely. Here he is though. Hoseok is somewhere here, and Yoongi is a thousand steps closer to finding him again than he was just a few hours ago.

When the barkeep decides he isn’t going to ask about their clothes, he grunts out a question, which is presumably something along the lines of “what do you want?”

“Um… water is just fine,” Yoongi says, and the man’s eyebrows merge together angrily. “I-I mean two beers.” He nods and grabs two enormous pint glasses from behind the bar and goes to fill them from a real-life drum with a brass spigot. Yoongi is a little bit charmed by it. He feels like he’s in a movie. The glasses are placed in front of them violently enough that some of the beer spills over.

Yoongi gives the man a hesitant smile and then pulls out a few coins from his pocket. “Will this do?” The barkeep picks up the coins, analyzes them deeply for a second before he grunts again and throws the money into his pocket. Yoongi feels like he’s accomplished so much and all he did was buy beer. Maybe this won’t be so hard.

“That’s good then,” Seokjin says. He picks up his pint and looks at it greedily for a second before he takes a very long swig. He comes back up with a little foam mustache, but his face is a little more relaxed.

“We have to make a game plan,” Yoongi says.

“We sure do,” Seokjin says. “I’m still trying to rationalize everything that’s happening right now.”

“Do you believe me now?” he asks. “Do you understand that Hoseok is here?”

“I… I guess,” he sounds unsure.

“Be a little more apologetic, won’t you?”

“I mean, Yoongi. None of this seems real. This is completely out of the realm of what I understood about the world, so cut me a little bit of slack. I was harsh, but I also don’t think you could have expected anything else from me. This is… wild.”

“Only if you apologize repeatedly.”

Seokjin sighs and looks at him sincerely. “I’m sorry, Yoongi. I wrote you off too quickly, and that was wrong. I’m very, extra, super, extremely sorry.”

Yoongi considers him and then nods. He’s easy to accept the apology because he understands why Seokjin doubted him. He probably would’ve doubted Seokjin if he had said the same thing. Actually… he doesn’t think he would have. Yoongi still clings to a lot of the fantasies he had as a child. He does however think most people would respond the way Seokjin did, so he’s not too terribly angry.

“Right, so we have to figure out what we’re going to do. We should probably get some clothes first,” Yoongi says. Seokjin is dressed even more ridiculously than him because Yoongi wears all black most days, but here’s Seokjin with a baby pink sweatshirt tied around his waist. They look like two walking targets. They’re either going to be burgled or jailed for being weird.

“We’re staying here?” Seokjin asks.

“Of course we are!”

Seokjin doesn’t look angry, he just looks worried. He had planned on going to work tomorrow, and it’s not like he can call their boss to tell her that he and Yoongi won’t be coming to work. He pulls out his phone as inconspicuously as he can to confirm that it is still dead.

“You can go back if you want to, but I’m staying.”

“No! I’m not going to leave you here alone, are you kidding me? I just don’t know what we do. You have no idea where to find Hoseok. We don’t know anything about this place.”

Yoongi nods. He peers around trying to make sure they aren’t be listened in on. He doesn’t notice anyone, but that’s because the person who’s eavesdropping on them is too smart to get caught. Their eavesdropper looks at his drink and takes a few careful sips as he parks up for more information.

“We’ll need to figure it out somehow. Right now, we need to find a place to stay while we get our bearings.”

“How long do you think this is going to take?” Seokjin asks. “Days? Weeks?”

“I don’t care.”

“We won’t have jobs when we get back, Yoongi. No call, no show. We may not even have an apartment. What about our parents? What will they think?” Seokjin hasn’t really put much thought into it until now. There was no reason for him to think about it, though, because an hour ago, Stormhold didn’t exist. An hour ago, he couldn’t be sitting in a tavern right now.

“Like I said, Seokjin, you can go back.”

Seokjin shakes his head. “That’s the thing, Yoongi. I can’t. How can someone turn away from a whole new world like this?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Yoongi winks. Seokjin sighs. It’s no use. Even if he knew how to talk Yoongi into going back, he doesn’t have that type of soullessness inside of him. This is the most amazing, wonderful, insane thing to ever happen to him, and his curiosity is far more pervasive than his rational mind.

“How are we going to begin to look for Hoseok?” Seokjin asks. “This place is… well I don’t know how big this place is. Presumably, large. Sun, moon, stars, right?”

“Probably the same sun, moon, and stars but go on.”

“Either way, they don’t have google maps here. They don’t have phone books. They have… what do they have? Horses? Taverns?” Seokjin gestures around them.

“I don’t know, honestly,” Yoongi says, shaking his head. He pulls his backpack up onto the stool with him and places it on his lap. Yoongi starts looking through his backpack, taking stock of what he did and didn’t bring. He only packed this bag a few hours ago, but it feels like everything is new. There things are all from his world, and here he is surrounded by a world that doesn’t know about modern convenience. He has a blanket, matches, Ziplock bag with candle and toiletries. Something in his bag strikes the interest in their eavesdropper as his eyes flash wide.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help but to overhear,” the voice of the young man sitting a few stools down from Yoongi interrupts their bubble. They both turn to look at him, a little panicked. He’s young, definitively younger than the two of them, but not by a whole lot. He’s got black hair, and brown doe eyes that make him look like a woodland creature. “It sounds like you two are looking for some sort of guide?”

“We…” Yoongi’s mouth is dry but he closes it, swallows and then tries again. “We are.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the man says, even though that’s quite obvious. Yoongi and Seokjin look at each other, but they don’t say anything or nod. They don’t know what the intentions of this man might be and they’re not willing to throw themselves under the bus like this. Or maybe throw themselves under a carriage since it’s the eighteenth century.

“Are you a guide or something?” Seokjin asks.

The man smiles, and it doesn’t look evil even though he seems very suspicious. “Better than that. I’m a soothsayer.”

Yoongi blinks at him. He knows he’s going to sound stupid, but he has no choice but to ask, “a what?”

“A soothsayer,” he says, looking at the two of them like they’re dumb. When neither of them seem to understand him, he raises an eyebrow. “I read runes… divine answers to questions. You know, like… soothsaying.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yoongi says, “of course.” He turns to look at Seokjin and mouths the word _psychic_ to him.

“Right, duh,” Seokjin plays along.

The man – or the soothsayer – can tell that they’re intellectually challenged to say the least. He smiles anyway because he wants to lure them into a sense of security. Not necessarily to swindle them, but whatever happens happens.

He stands up, grabbing his drink, and gestures for them to follow. “Let’s have a chat at a table, won’t you, gentlemen?” Yoongi has never been called a gentleman before. Is that how people here talk? Hoseok talked in the sweetest, most adorable way possible. This man is not nearly as cute as Hoseok, but he certainly belongs to the same world in the way that he dresses.

Yoongi shrugs and stands up to follow him to a corner of the room that’s secluded from the other patrons, though there are only six other people in here. Yoongi and Seokjin sit next to each other and the man across from them. The man looks so casual sitting in his chair like he owns the place. Considering how nervous Yoongi’s shoulders are, anything looks cool in comparison.

“I’m Jungkook,” the man says. He doesn’t hold his hand out to shake, he just looks at them expectantly.

“Yoongi,” Yoongi says.

“Seokjin.”

“Very well,” Jungkook says. “Care to tell me a little bit more about this man you seek?”

“You really were listening in on our whole conversation, weren’t you?”

Jungkook shrugs. “You weren’t quiet.”

“So, do you… see, we’re travelers,” Yoongi says. He doesn’t want to say outsider. Maybe he can convince Jungkook that they’re from the next Kingdom over?

“Yes, I gathered that,” Jungkook says. “Are you from Lamia?”

“Uh… yeah,” Yoongi says. He can pretend to be from Lamia, sure.

Jungkook almost laughs to himself. Lamia isn’t a real place, it’s the name of the long dead Witch Queen. He isn’t going to say anything about it, though. His interest in the weird origin of these men isn’t that deep. What he cares about is something else entirely.

“What is it that you want in return, Jungkook?” Yoongi asks.

“Oh, all I want from you is that candle you have there,” Jungkook says, gesturing with a nod to the backpack on Yoongi’s lap.

“The candle?” Yoongi asks, confused. He pulls out the Ziplock again to find the long black candle. It’s just an ordinary candle, isn’t it? Yoongi recalls now that the person who sold it to Seokjin had said it was a very special candle. At the time, Yoongi just thought that it was a selling tactic, but now he wonders.

“Mhm, yes,” Jungkook’s eyes are wide and he’s looking at the candle intently, almost as though he’s hypnotized by it.

“Hmm. So, what’s special about this candle?” Yoongi asks.

Jungkook bites his lip and tries to fake a nonchalant smile, but he’s very clearly centered on the candle. “It’s just special.” Jungkook knows he can’t say why, because then these two morons will just go ahead and waste it.

“But what does it do?”

Jungkook purses his lips. “Tell you what. I’ll come with you until you find this Hoseok of yours, okay? You can hold onto that candle until then. But don’t light it! You can’t light it.” His face looks urgent at the prospect of the candle being lit.

“Why won’t you tell me what it does?” Yoongi asks.

Jungkook feels his stomach double over a few times. He doesn’t want to steal it from these two. He’s one person and there’s two of them so he wouldn’t make it very far if he were to grab it and run. But there’s nothing he desires more than a Babylon candle and these two happen to have one. The rarest item in the entire Kingdom and these two numbskulls have one but don’t know what it is.

Jungkook needs to prove himself to them. He doesn’t know how better to do it than to pull his runes from his pocket and set them on the table. They’re polished black crystals with golden symbols on one side that Yoongi doesn’t recognize. They look a lot like mahjong tiles, but clearly made of a much nicer stone, like obsidian maybe. Yoongi thinks that they look like something a child would play with or you could buy at some weird hippie store. He’s not impressed so far.

“I’ll show you a little example, okay? That way you’ll know why you need me on your quest.”

The two of them look at Jungkook quizzically. He gives them a reassuring face, because this is the one thing he’s good at. Not that it’s really a skill, he was just born into it.

“The man you look for, his name is Hoseok?” Jungkook says. Yoongi nods, and Jungkook picks up his runes. Jungkook holds the runes in his hands, warming them up and then looks at them as if he’s considering something. He holds them above the table and then drops them down onto it pointedly. The stones, four of them in total, all land face up, displaying their weird symbols. “Your Hoseok is still alive,” Jungkook says as he looks at them.

That’s a relief, Yoongi supposes, but he already assumed that was true.

“How does that work?” Yoongi asks. He picks up one of the stones, which makes Jungkook’s eyes open widely and he takes it back quickly. Yeah, hypothetically if he lost his runes he could make more, but he’s rather attached to these ones. They were his mothers’ before him and he was taught how to use his powers on these stones.

“They won’t work for you,” Jungkook says.

“But what exactly do they do?”

Jungkook doesn’t know how he got so unlucky as to deal with someone so stupid, but he’ll entertain them. He needs that candle. “I just ask a yes or no question and then the runes give me the answer.”

“Like a magic 8 ball,” Seokjin says. Yoongi nearly forgot that Seokjin was there.

“A what?” Jungkook asks. The runes are a type of magic for sure, but he doesn’t know what an ‘8 ball’ is.

Seokjin blushes and shrugs his shoulders.

“Can you tell me something else?” Yoongi asks. “Can you prove that they’re actually real and you’re not making it up?”

Jungkook does his best not to roll his eyes. “Is your name Yoongi?” Jungkook holds the runes above the table and then drops them. Again, they’re all face up, which seems somewhat too improbable to be a coincidence. Though maybe they’re just like loaded dice. Jungkook seems. To sense his skepticism because he picks up his runes again. “Is my name Yoongi?” He drops the stones, and miraculously, all four stones are face down.

“Whoa,” Yoongi and Seokjin say in unison. Is it possible that Jungkook is playing a trick on them? It doesn’t seem very likely. This is a world of magic after all. Jungkook has no way of knowing just how far they’ve travelled, so he has no way of knowing if a scam would work on them. If it’s a scam, he wouldn’t be able to pull it on anyone besides the two people sitting across from him. 

“You really aren’t from around here,” Jungkook says. He collects his ruins and then gives them a questioning look. “Is there anything else you’d like me to prove?”

“Uh… how do you plan on using those to help us find him?” Seokjin asks.

Jungkook smiles. He kind of likes the look of wonder on their faces. It gives him a fun sense of power. “Does Hoseok head west?” Jungkook drops the runes and they indicate no. “How about east?” This time, the stones say yes.

“Sick,” Yoongi says. Jungkook doesn’t know in what way his stones are ailed, but he’s willing to chalk it up to differing cultures. Yoongi reaches into his pocket for his compass and looks at it excitedly. He studies it to find out which direction is east. East is right behind them and Yoongi looks at the place in the wall facing east as if he’ll be able to see Hoseok right there. Obviously, he sees nothing, but his heart feels warm knowing that that’s the direction. Somewhere in that direction is Hoseok.

“So, do we have a deal? I help you find Hoseok and in exchange, you give me the candle?”

“You’re really not going to tell us what the candle does?” Yoongi asks.

Jungkook shakes his head. “No. But without me you will never find the man you’re searching for. As long as you don’t burn that candle, I swear to you that I will guide you safely.” It’s the truth, he thinks. If he finds a way of stealing the candle it would be a lot easier, but he is fully capable of helping them in a way no one else could. He’s not a horrible person, so he thinks he’d prefer to just get it over with and help them find the person they seek. It would be a lot less bad on his conscience in the long run.

“Alright,” Seokjin says. Yoongi is astonished with Seokjin’s words and turns to look at him. Does Seokjin believe in him? Is he truly willing to accept what Jungkook is saying? Yoongi believes him, but Seokjin is a very stubborn person. It’s bewildering for him to be coming around to Yoongi’s side of things.

Jungkook smiles with a big toothy smile. He looks cute, actually. Yoongi no doubt suspects that something is afoot, so he’ll have to keep his wits about him. But Jungkook doesn’t look evil. He looks kind. His offer doesn’t seem that ridiculous. Yoongi just wishes he knew what this candle does. He knows that he can’t light it because then Jungkook won’t help them, and they will very much need a soothsayer if they’re ever to find Hoseok. When Yoongi holds Hoseok safely in his arms and he hands over the candle, he’ll be able to ask Jungkook what the candle does and maybe he’ll tell them.

He wonders how long this is going to take. With Jungkook, it will surely take far less time, but he still has no clue. It could be days or weeks or more. Does Jungkook know what he’s getting into?

“Wonderful,” Jungkook says. “When do we start?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment prompt for today is to tell me the last movie you watched or a movie recommendation for me (just not horror).


End file.
